


The Locusts of Abaddon

by GreenMuffin



Category: Metroid Series
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), Science Fiction, Space Opera, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2020-05-14 10:57:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 81,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19271875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenMuffin/pseuds/GreenMuffin
Summary: The year is 235 after the Galactic Advent. Civilizations across the Milky Way, united under the Galactic Federation, now struggle against the enigmatic and unrelenting Space Pirate threat. To combat this foe, the Galactic Federal Police keep watchful outposts in every corner of federally-controlled space. On the savage world known as SR-388, a biologic research team has just discovered something which should have been left forgotten beneath the surface.This is a retelling of the Metroid story with a focus on worldbuilding and character development. It is also an experiment, being my first narrative work. Please let me know what you think-- not just about the story, but about the writing style, pacing, characterization, etc. I aspire to write original fiction, so your criticism at this point will be immeasurably helpful and greatly appreciated.





	1. Metroid

**Author's Note:**

> Fanfiction Morphology: This retelling of the story represented in the Metroid series of video games (as well as a few examples of extended-universe media) has been altered from its original state by the introduction of an unknown foreign contaminant. Hence, many details in the following account may differ wildly from canon. Use caution when reading The Locusts of Abaddon; it contains adult language and themes and is not intended for younger audiences. The Metroid series of video games (and all associated media, characters, and story elements) is owned by Nintendo, not by the author of this fanfiction.
> 
> Additionally, you may find this [glossary](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19343548) helpful to keep track of the terms and names used in the story.

**_ The Locusts of Abaddon _ **

_by Jenna “GreenMuffin”_

**Prologue**

Nothing remains now to prove we were ever anything but what we are—nothing, that is, except for our Last Hope. Peering into it would yield our story, beautiful as a newborn star in the beginning, but turning to violence and ruination akin to no other analogue in the end. Rebirth and resolution forged our new visages, but at great cost. And so we began once more the long game. Shards of our past fused once again in the fires of our intellect. We produced in secret one Last Hope, and all the while, the universe continues on its preordained path to birth our salvation.

You need not forgive us if your life lacks meaning and is instead full of suffering. Blame rests on our shoulders for the burden you bear. But bear it! Be strong of heart and mind! And never surrender to any but those truly, intrinsically greater than yourself.

This message is without time. It is without judgement. It is without sympathy, empathy, or pity. Receive it for what it is. Then, perhaps, there shall be hope.

 

**Chapter 1: Metroid**

Ogygia had no life before the predominantly-Tellurian-human Galactic Federal Police moved in. Now, a small settlement there teamed with human life—mostly human—and mostly beneath the surface structures. They’d colonized it with the express purpose of setting up an outpost there: Syracuse Ravine Sector HQ. It became the central nervous system for all federal law enforcement in that section of the galaxy. That wasn’t saying much, though, given the sparse, diffused populations therein. But every cubed inch of Federation Space needed a watchful eye and a protective shield, so here was the Galactic Federal Police. Syracuse Ravine didn’t know it yet, but it was in desperate need of a sword.

For now, one human—chief, on that moon—sat with growing discomfort in a cold, pale gray room tucked away a few dozen feet under the surface. Sector Chief Howell had never been in that particular briefing room, although he had passed it practically every day for the last seven months. Now he wanted out. He wanted desperately to toss his chair back, thunder to the door, and _no-no-no, that just won’t do_. He forced a familiar calm over himself and focused on what the BSL (Biologic Space Labs) liaison was saying.

“Dawn storms did a number on the transmission,” said the liaison—a real runt of a kid, “but we got… Well, I’ll just play it and you can see for yourself.”

He leaned forward and passed the chief his holopad, pressing his finger on the holographic projection of the play-button as he did. The recording, now infamous in Howell’s department, played before the chief’s small, dark eyes.

The static dispersed in lines to form an image of a cave lit by serpentine array of construction lights. A HUD on the edges of the screen revealed the helmet-cam’s operator was one _I. Brunai_. Figures moved in and out of frame, some carrying equipment, all wearing hardened pressure suits. The suits made them look like plastic gorillas with LEDs slapped all over them.

“Chamber’s dead ahead,” said one of the figures.

“Copy that,” replied the in-helmet voice of Brunai, unfiltered by radio. As they stepped through shafts of light, the green-and-gold _BSL_ logo showed prominently on their shoulders.

The lights snaking along the cave walls soon took a turn and a cathedralic chamber opened before the camera. Spotlights from the suits further illuminated the chasm. There was something circular covering most of the floor.

“God almighty!” sighed Brunai before static took the image away.

Picture faded back in to show the suited figures now on the floor of the chamber. Almost all of them were looking down, studying the design on the floor.

“What is it?” asked one.

Brunai knelt down to touch a gloved hand to the smoothly-carved designs. “It’s Chozo, alright. But it’s ancient!” His light played across spindly, sharp letters etched all throughout the cavern-wide design. “We got pictures of these messages, right? Good. I’ll translate it later, but, from what I can see here, it looks like some sort of warning. Or curse.”

“Curse? Do the Chozo even believe in curses?”

“No, they don’t. Or, at least, they don’t anymore. What I’d really like to know is what this is in the middle here.” Brunai’s light, shining on the middle of the room, was soon joined by those of the others, illuminating an almost circular image.

270 degrees of a perfect circle, open on the bottom, encased three complete circles inside it, stacked like a pyramid. The bottom of the larger circle produced what looked like four fangs, curving down from the image. Static cut intermittently through Brunai and his companions’ process of studying the carving. The chief leaned his head on his hand, rubbing his eyes.

“You should have pulled out.”

“We didn’t know.” The liaison was sweating.

Knowing what would follow, Chief Howell sat back and chewed his cheeks. The recording continued to play, now showing the BSL team placing a drill on the edge of the carved floor. From afar, Brunai watched the drill operators kick up dust and rubble with their monstrous machine. And right on cue, just as the chief’s aide had described, came the eruption. Clouds of lavender vapor spewed up from the drill’s penetration, soon followed by geysers of dark purple liquid. The camera, previously steady as a rock, now jolted and wavered. Image and color blurred and, somehow, there were now smoking remnants of BSL pressure suits floating in a rising pool of the purple liquid. The drill sagged, then snapped, splashing down in a steaming ruin.

Voices now blared through the helmet’s radio, each of them drowning out the other. Brunai ran—as much as a man in a hard pressure suit can run—along twisting cavern paths. His voice was clearer and louder over the others.

“The lines can’t be severed, they’re made of bendezium! Just pull them in! Reel them in, dammit, that’s Riley and Pyter down there!”

Static hid his progress through more of the caves, finally clearing to show Brunai holding a woven metal cable, blackened and smoking at either end.

“That’s not—that’s just—” he stammered, then looked up. He was one of many now standing at the edge of a receding pool of the purple liquid. The cave floor, dotted with puddles of the substance, now glimmered with previously obscured metallic luster. There were no remains whatsoever of the drill or its operators.

“Dr. Mosolev? Riley?”

“They’re gone.”

“They can’t be gone, they were just there! RILEY! Where are ya?”

“Shut up, Case! They’re gone, we watched them go.”

“This stuff…” Brunai knelt near one of the puddles. He dipped the metal cable in, then kept going. He stopped short of dipping his actual hand in and brought the cable back up. Except there was no cable, just smoke. “This stuff disintegrated them,” he said flatly.

With a commotion of voices on his radio, he walked forward to the bubbling hole through which the purple liquid now drained. His suit’s light moved around its rim, three feet across, then down inside.

Movement.

“What the…?”

A rush of dull green knocked the camera’s view to stare completely still at the ceiling’s stalactites. Voices, rushing footfalls, screams, and thuds filled the air.

“Doctor!”

“His helmet! Wh—”

“The fuck is that!?”

“Doctor, get up! D-don’t breathe!”

“Klono, it’s coming right at me! HELP!”

“Get it off him! Help him!”

“Someone get Iz on his feet!”

“NO! FUCK, get it OFF!”

In a wordless scuffle, someone kicked the helmet. The view rolled over and over as a scream echoed throughout the chamber, ending in a hollow crunch. Finally, the helmet’s camera settled to show the hole in the ground. A suited figure’s legs stumbled into view, followed by another set. They struggled, then the first figure fell to the ground stiffly. There was something attached to the suit’s helmet and chest.

Howell paused the video and frowned.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s the new species,” said the liaison.

“What’d your boys call it?”

“We don’t have a name yet. We don’t know enough.”

Recordings of autopsies followed and the urge to flee filled Howell’s chest again. Brunai and a xenobotanist named Pine no longer looked human, laid out on slabs like that. They didn’t even resemble organic material. A scalpel tried to cut, but the skin simply crumbled away, as brittle as spent charcoal. Mercifully, that was the last of it. Howell practically shoved the holopad back into the liaison’s hands and stood, his back to the kid.

“Gods of the Void…” was all Howell could muster.

“We know next to nothing about them. The crew planetside is still too scared to go back into the tunnels.”

“No shit.”

The liaison swallowed. “Corporate wants a specimen for study.”

“Of course they do.”

“It would help if we had the all-clear to deploy heavy weapons,” the liaison said after a pause, sounding as though Howell should be the one suggesting it.

“BSL doesn’t need my permission to use heavy weapons. You have the equivalent of a full mining permit for that planet.” Howell turned and stared stonily at the liaison. “You’re passing the buck. I deny you go-ahead, you’ll just do it anyway and I’ve lost friends. I give it, and something goes wrong, I’ll take the fall.”

The liaison had nothing to say.

“Your entire company is insatiable. Aren’t four deaths enough for you? Fine. Way I see it, at least It’ll give you a fighting chance.”

“Thank you, Chief—”

“Just one thing, though.” Howell moved in close to the liaison and pointed a thick finger down at him. “You keep me informed. I want to know immediately the moment anything goes wrong down there. You keep that planet locked down.”

“Sir, what exactly are you afraid of?”

“Hopefully,” Howell sighed, “nothing.”

 

* * *

 

Ogygia’s steel-gray sky threatened rain. Terry Utem leaned forward over his controls and stared up through the upper curve of the windshield. The clouds rolled and roiled, their motion appreciable even next to the speed of the skycar. He looked left, over the craggy, barren hills, where the clouds were at their darkest, almost pitch-black. No lightning yet. It’d kick up once the wind got going.

Chief Howell dozed fitfully in the back seat, completing the visage of a tired old bear. Terry had been his personal pilot for four years. At first, he’d hated the job. Who goes through two intensive years in the Cadet Corps on top of another two years of flight training at Dupree to become a glorified chauffeur for some schlubby bureaucrat? But then he got to talking to Howell—got to know him. Howell knew the score, even if he’d never seen real action against the enemy. His sisters had. Howell rarely talked about them, but when he did, he made it clear they were more to him than just tragedies to avenge. The entire Howell clan were warriors. They demanded respect, each one.

“Make no mistake, son, we’re at war,” Howell had told him once, back before the Sector HQ moved to Ogygia (back on Palduette when you could actually see the sun and stars; so what if the air was mainly arsenic?). “We’re soldiers, each and every one of us. The enemy is out there, hiding behind a mask of piracy. They’re not common criminals, so we can’t be common police officers. We have to be more. We have to be soldiers.” And, as usual, he had trailed off, telling Terry to forget it and keep driving. Terry had never been in combat against the pirates either, so he didn’t really follow Howell’s meaning. But it made its impact. He was doing his part and he was ready to do more when the time came. If the time came.

He’d been promoted to assistant sector chief alongside their move to this dreary, wet moon. Maybe it was compensation (Howell was well aware of Terry’s ambitions), or maybe it was true respect. Either way, he remained the chief’s pilot and liked it.

The rain started pattering against the glass before him.

Addendum: he liked _most_ of it.

 

Here came the lightning, right on cue. Howell safely deposited at his home, Terry now directed the skycar to the other side of the little valley settlement. He flew high over solar fields, all of them dormant now under the midnight cloud cover. Each solar panel was a silhouette over the little star fragments stored up underneath. The solar capacitors would dole out their light to the crops growing beneath them, running dry just in time for Ogygia’s next month-long exposure to Calypso, their little, red, temperature-challenged, star-that-could. Dawn would come in four Galactic Standard days.

Terry set the car down in the garage and hit the shutter control to close the doors above him before he stepped out. Rain hammered on the house, louder now that he was out of the sound-dampened skycar. He trudged up the stairs, unlocked the door, discarded his uniform unceremoniously onto the cot, cracked a beer, and slumped down onto the couch. His holopad stared at him, angled on its little kickstand. He tapped the call button. His face pulled itself into a grin even as the call routed. He couldn’t help himself.

“Hey, babe, how’s it going?” There she was. Radiant—his personal starlight.

“Hi, beautiful, you have—” but she interrupted him.

“Whoa, dude, cancel out the rain! Sounds like a stampede!”

“Oops, sorry.” Terry quickly went into the call options and set the receiver to cancel out the rain. “How’s this?”

“Perfect.”

“Sorry, I keep forgetting.”

“You’re getting used to it.”

“Gods, I hope not! I can’t stand it here.”

“Oh,” she gave him a mock pout, “you’ll make it. It’s just a little rain. It rained here all day today.”

“Your days are only one day each!” That got her snorting into laughter. “You have the worst laugh ever. I love it.”

“Fuck you.”

“Oh-ho-ho, is that a promise?”

“You bet.” She winked and cracked a beer of her own in view of the camera. They clinked their cans each against their holopads in an interstellar toast and drank. “So how was it today?” she asked. “Besides the rain. Whole galaxy knows how much you hate that.”

“Today was okay. Had some excitement with BSL.”

“Fun times.” The sarcasm in her voice almost matched his. “What’d they want? Volunteers for human vivisection?”

“Nah, not this time. Seriously, though, they had this recording of a new species they found during an excavation.”

“Can you say where?”

“I probably shouldn’t. Howell seemed really shook-up after watching it, though.” A pause. “Anyway, how was your day? Still working on that Albright story?”

She let out a long groan and ran her fingers through her thick, dark hair.

“That bad, huh?”

“Terry, promise me you’ll never say the following words to me: _We don’t comment on rumor or speculation_. I swear, they’ve media-trained every _single_ person at that company within fifty meters of a working Q-link. I can’t get a damned thing out of anyone! Jerri told me they probably have me on a black list by now.”

“Hey, that’s something! The first corporate black list of your career!” He lifted the can again and she toasted him back, smiling despite herself.

“Yeah, well, I’m just hoping the roughly five thousand other black-listed journalists don’t break through and verify before I do.”

“You’ll pull through, Kallie, and you’ll kick ass.”

“Thanks. Seven weeks and three days,” she said with a broad smile.

“And then three weeks of paradise,” he cooed back.

“Love you, babe.” She blew a kiss and waved.

“I love you. Sleep tight.” He mirrored her gesture and ended the call.

 

* * *

 

“We have a name,” announced the liaison once Howell was again in the briefing room with him, two days after their first meeting. Without any prompting to signal interest on Howell’s part, the liaison continued: “MET-Droid. They aren’t purely organic. Biomechanical, hence the _droid_ part of the name. The first part—the _MET_ —stands for _Mutable Energy Transfer_ , which refers to these things’ ability to—”

“I’m guessing that means you’ve had an opportunity to study the things?” Howell took one of the chairs. The liaison nodded, smiling from his position perched on a desk corner.

“Wish I could be there. Well…” his smile faded. “Maybe not, on second thought. It hasn’t been easy on the ground team.”

Howell sighed and rubbed his eyes before extending a hand. The liaison handed over the holopad. This time, Howell was sure his eyes were the first on the new recordings outside BSL. Strangely, it made him feel worse.

He watched weapons tests against the… things. There were more now, always filtering through the hole in the ground. They reminded Howell of Terran jellyfish—they way they moved. But a jellyfish was, as its name suggested, fragile. A sharp stick brandished by a child could impale a jellyfish; these _Metdroids_ effortlessly rebounded mass and energy projectiles alike. A capture attempt followed, then more autopsies, and Howell wanted to go home. He wanted to collapse on his couch and hug his wife. He wanted to ask her how her day went, just to forget—for a moment—this damned video.

Finally, the recording ended with one successful capture attempt. The BSL security officers had used interstellar-grade engine coolant. Blue-white fog filled a thin passageway, clearing after a few seconds to reveal a lone, frozen specimen. They put it in a deep-freeze metal canister and hauled it away. All done, the video paused on the last, blurry frame.

“So…” the chief referred vaguely, helplessly to the paused holopad. “Why? Why in Klono’s titanium balls would anyone _build_ something like this!?”

The liaison shrugged.

“Did the Chozo build it?”

“We don’t know. Dr. Brunai was our leading ancient Chozo expert. I was actually kinda’ hoping you could get us in touch with the Chozo Embassy on Daiban so we could ask them directly.”

Howell stood, feeling age crack through his back. “I can’t do that. It isn’t that I think it’s a piss-poor idea to accuse the most peaceful race in GF space of manufacturing bioweapons; it’s that this is way over my head.” He turned to the liaison again. “How many men did it take to capture that one?”

“…fifty-seven.”

“How many lived?”

“…three.”

“The planet stays locked down,” the chief said after a heavy sigh, “no civilian ships in, no equipment out until I give the all-clear. Can they survive in vacuum?”

“Probably—”

“SHIT-fire! You keep the specimen in maximum containment on your station.”

“Believe me, we don’t have any p—”

“I want to be put into contact with your head of security at that station. Now.”

The chief was already on his way to the door. “But chief, it’s probably in deep-freeze containment by now! It’s not breaking out—”

“That’s not what I’m worried about. BSL-388 head of security—I want him on a line. Follow me to my office.”

The liaison gulped, then snatched up his holopad and scrambled after the chief.

 

Fake sunlight poured from the wall lamps in the chief’s office. Real Earth-grown cherry oak desk, black leather chairs, a bookcase where gaps between the pristine volumes housed ship models and marksmanship trophies; it would have looked warm and inviting under different circumstances.

“External call,” the chief growled upon entering, “BSL Station 388, office of head of security. Authorization: Howell Y-09-indigo.”

A razor-thin layer of blue incandescence rose from the desk to form a screen. An improbably symmetrical face of a young, dark woman appeared on the screen, smiling.

“388 Security, how can I h—” her robotic voice was interrupted by the liaison upon the chief’s gesticulated insistence.

“We need a direct, secure line to Director of Security Ben Orifushi. Emergency override, authorization VE-549275.”

“Authorization accepted. Connecting…”

“What in Third Hell’s taking so long!?” the chief barked. The liaison shrugged helplessly.

Seconds passed, then, with the screen changing to show an empty, cold-looking office, an arm came into view, soon followed by the frowning face of DoS Orifushi.

“Howell, I was about to call you. No, just listen. We lost it. The transport’s been taken. It was them. The pirates, Howell.”

The liaison was out of sweat. Howell sank into one of his leather chairs. “Space Pirates…” he sighed.

“Yes. We’re cleaning up what we can, but… well, you know they don’t leave much behind. They snapped up right after atmo. They knew exactly when to attack; we didn’t even know what was happening until it was all over.”

“And the Metdroid?”

“That must’ve been what they were after.” Unbelievably, Orifushi smiled. “But we’ve got them.”

“How so? You just said they’re gone!”

“They’re gone, but we’ve got a tracker on the specimen’s containment unit. Chief, it’s still active.”

Howell sat forward, gripping the arms of his chair. “But they always—”

“—always disable trackers, I know.” Orifushi was grinning wider now and nodding. “But this time, looks like they forgot.”

 _They don’t forget_ , Howell thought, _something’s wrong here._

“Chief, the only leak I can see is on your end,” Orifushi was saying. His smile had vanished.

“Leak?”

“How the hell else do you think they knew exactly when and where to strike? We’ve been locked down for a week, whereas you…”

“Yeah…”

Orifushi paused, eyes narrowing. “I got work to do, Howell. So do you.” And he clicked off.

The liaison found his voice all at once: “God-DAMN pirates! They had it all worked out! And they have it! We—we have to find them—find them and get it back, or—or destroy it! Howell—” He moved around to face the chief. “We know next to nothing about the Metdroid; the only thing we’re sure about is it’s a resilient sonofabitch and can feed through all shielding we had planetside. If the pirates find a way to duplicate it—to mass-produce it!? By the time we find them, it’ll be too late! We’re—”

“I’m not so worried about that, kid.” Howell opened his eyes and smiled darkly. “Well, not yet at least. I know these bastards. Your head of security said they made a mistake, but I know from experience they don’t make mistakes. They’re rote, they’re strict, they don’t break from routine ever. Even when we learn to predict their movements—bait them—they still stick to their protocols, whatever they are.”

“Are they really that stupid?”

“They’re really that confident. And for good reason. In the fifty-two years since the first raids, the Galactic Federal Police has yet to take a single Re-Dac ship intact, let alone a research base.” He looked right at the fretting liaison. “We know where they are, but I assure you, they’re untouchable. Which means this ‘mistake’ of theirs is no mistake at all.”

 

* * *

 

Minds of positrons and diodes reached across the cosmos, seeking, probing.

“There are not enough of us,” said one.

“We left too many holes,” said another.

“We did it to ourselves,” replied a third.

“This is what comes of absentee leadership—” began one of the minds, but another cut it off with a sharp, surgical thought.

“We were put in charge to lead this galaxy to glory. Do not forget your place.”

“How could this have happened? Great care was taken to set this conflict in motion. This could upset the balance we planned out so carefully!”

“No plan is perfect, especially when dealing with these low intellects.”

“It matters not how; all that matters is a swift resolution.”

“Mathematically, one possibility, among many, stands out,” spoke up a previously silent mind.

“Speak.”

“Unit 002 was altered after installation on the Chozo planet Zebes. It could have turned a local cell to its own will.”

“Highly unlikely. The Chozo lost all taste for war and subterfuge centuries ago. Why would they move against us so suddenly and efficiently after so long a cultural atrophy?”

“Perhaps they are no longer in control of 002.”

“Indeed. Facades of purity do not protect against betrayal.”

“We should investigate Zebes.”

“It matters not. The rogue cell left a trail to follow. The newly-formed Galactic Federal Police will follow and engage.”

“This may even prove to be a test case for the impending conflict.”

“Agreed.”

“Agreed.”

“Therefore, nothing changes. We sit and wait. We observe. We advise.”

“Agreed.” The minds resumed a passive convalescence.

 

* * *

 

Two hours had passed since Zulu-team’s last report. Chief Howell was in Syracuse Ravine “war room”, which was really no different from any of their other briefing rooms. None of his officers said it, but they all saw it: the three weeks since the raid at BSL-388 had aged him three years.

“That confirms it, then,” he said, alongside his hundredth sigh that day. He leaned forward at his console and touched a red button outlined by yellow stripes.

Chairman of Galactic Peace Hardy appeared on the screen, face like oatmeal, bald head like a waxed floor. “Yes, what’ve you found?”

“They’re on Zebes, sir.”

“You know this for sure?”

“BSL’s tracking blip dropped in the Zephos system. I assigned a recon team to Zephos two days ago. Two hours ago, they started investigating the second planet, the Chozo planet Zebes, and promptly dropped out of all contact.”

Hardy’s mustache bristled. “Zebes is an active Chozo world, isn’t it? Not like SR-388 where we found that blasted metdroid thing.” Howell nodded “So? Did you try to contact the Chozo? They’re a constituent race, after all!”

“We did, sir, but we got no answer. The planet was dark. Still is. They’re also not picking up at their embassy.”

“And now we’ve lost a recon squad of patrolmen…” Hardy sighed, “But you said it best; _this is the first time we have a head start on disrupting a new pirate operation_. I just hope we can make a dent in them without blowing a crater in ourselves.”

“Sir, that may be what it takes. They’re getting more brazen.”

Hardy shifted his wide mass in his chair. “I know. Howell, I’m going to let you in on a little secret.” _God, here he goes again. What’ll it be this time? More business jargon picked up from his days in the staryacht industry?_ “Never put your hand in an engine if you can pay someone else to do it for you.” _Fuckin’ called it_.

“I’m not sure I follow, sir.”

“Given that Zebes is an active constituent world, planetary bombardment is out. In this case, official practice is to send strike forces in to drive the pirates out. But in the history of the Force, we’ve never been able to do it without losing some of our own in the process. And I’ll be damned if I let a single brave soul die under my command when we have an alternative.”

“Alternative… sir…?”

Hardy’s broad grin showed beneath his mustache as he held up a holopad. “Bounty hunters. Good old Vogl approved it this morning. Horned toad’s good for something once in a while, isn’t he?”

 _Bounty hunter_ was one name for those unscrupulous parasites, others being _mercenary_ , _pirate for hire_ , _hitman_ … Individuals and corporations could hire them, but the Federation itself had always recused itself from such things. They had the Federal Police. Officers in the Force could be held to laws, regulations, jurisdiction, chain of command, and all other staples of civilization. But a bounty hunter… since the most ancient of times in any culture, they’d been there to scrape a living off of death and feed themselves through any legal loophole they could find.

Howell, an Earth Navy vet, wasn’t a fan of bounty hunters. But, then again, what choice did civilization have? As much as he hated to admit it, the chairman was right: assault on Zebes or any pirate base was impossible without massive casualties. A bounty hunter, if paid enough, could be sent against the enemy. Then, the Force could observe as the hunter broke against the wall like so much water. They’d know what kinds of defenses the installation had; they could plan accordingly.

And it wouldn’t be the Federation’s loss… not really. Clearly, people all the way up the chain to the Chairman of the Federation Vogl himself thought the same.

“I’m forming a task force to look over any and all applicants,” Hardy was saying. “I’ll send along the dossiers we select. You’ll be given operational command of each successive assault on the planet.”

“You think they’ll listen to me?”

“Oh, they’ll have to listen to you if it’s in their contracts. Don’t worry, Howell, I’ll make sure they don’t give you too much trouble.”

“Thank you, sir.” Howell tried his best to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

Call ended, Howell sidled up to the assistant sector chief—a bespeckled younger man with a Venusian accent—and spoke low: “Terry, did you get confirmation on those security stress-tests from yesterday?”

“Uh, yes, sir, they’re—”

“Okay, run ‘em again and assign an additional perimeter patrol. Oh, and put Adkins in charge of armory.”

Terry blinked behind his glasses. “Are we expecting trouble from the pirates, sir?”

“Not from the pirates. Emergency action from the brass—they’re sending bounty hunters.”

“Bounty hunters? Jesus, is that—are things really that bad?” For Terry to swear by one of the old gods, the kid must’ve been rattled.

“Not yet,” Howell said, “but they will be if we don’t solve this thing quick.”

 

* * *

 

Terry turned back to his console and closed his eyes. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. His conversation with Kallie last night hadn’t been pretty.

_Emergency indefinite suspension of leave? They can’t do that! You have to push back! It’s not that easy. You just don’t want to make waves. Don’t be like that. Like what? This isn’t my fault. You told me this wouldn’t happen. I’m scared to death. You think you’re the only one?_

And now he’d have to face her tonight and deliver, in no uncertain terms, the news. Neither he nor any officer stationed in the Syracuse Ravine sector would be granted furlough until a satisfactory conclusion came to the SR-388 crisis. Except now it was the Zebes crisis. No telling what it would be tomorrow.

He almost felt a pang of resentment towards her. She could sit there, cozy, on Daiban, safest planet in the Galaxy, while he had to deal with this impending disaster (and it would be a disaster, just ask anyone and count the seconds before they feigned confidence). She had the gall to put this on _him?_ But he knew better. She was stressed, just like him. They would say things they didn’t mean and express feelings half-formed. Then, later, they’d apologize. He could see all of it playing out like a bad romcom. He knew it’d work out in the end, but that didn’t change the fact that it sucked here and now.

What’s worse, now that they had a clear target, comms privileges would undoubtedly get cut down to almost nil. Being unable to argue made the eventual spats all the more bitter. Only now did Terry fully appreciate the sort of benefit Howell must enjoy, having his family here with him.

Well, a certain little item sitting quietly in his closet back home might change his circumstance. _Might_ being the operative word there. There wasn’t really any way he could ask Kallie to pick up and move to the middle of nowhere with him just because they’d exchanged a few words and added to one another’s sparse jewelry collections. She had her career with DIN which absolutely, positively, under no circumstances could ever advance anywhere if she left Daiban, whereas a Federal Police pilot could find work literally anywhere.

Hell, depending on how this whole thing turned out, he might consider moving back to civilization. All he needed was the furlough he’d been promised. Talk it over. Put things in perspective. You can’t very well propose to your girlfriend over Q-link.

 

* * *

 

She was exquisitely beautiful: thick cascades of golden-blonde hair flowed across her thinly-toned, young body as she moved. Eyes like blue fire, skin like silk, fingers strong and slender—there was no flaw, no blemish to mar the living portrait of feminine humanity. And her lips! The exact same cherry-blossom-pink as on her perfectly round nipples and the tender folds of her labia. No hair grew below her luscious head; why did humans like their women mostly bald? And as she ran, her muscles tensed and relaxed in rhythmic ripples. So soft… so fragile… so very naked.

She ran to the other door, having abandoned the first. Her fingers worked at a mechanism she obviously didn’t understand. Whimpers and gasps like music rose from her throat. That same throat carried everything: the sweet breath of her life, the warm blood from her heart, the electric impulses between her body and her mind. It also carried a passage for food. She had eaten recently. He had made sure she was as comfortable as possible until now.

But that was all over. He watched her punch, kick, scream at the door in vain, and he kept thinking about her neck. For such a lovely, important part of her anatomy, it really was quite unprotected. It was long (human artists would call it elegant) and only the nerves were protected by hard bone matter. The rest simply rested in a squishy array of tender strings; plucking any one of them would be so simple. Truly, in her fear, this specimen revealed the effortless beauty of helplessness. Too bad he was so hungry. But could he be blamed? The way she was now looking at him, pleading, sliding down the wall, hands across her ample bosom. Who could resist apatite with so juicy a morsel laid out before him?

“Please…” she managed. Her voice was an orchestra, but her language—that human language—was all discord. “My family has money! They will pay you wha-whatever you want! The VanBusberks! I’m—I’m Pearl VanBusberk! Please…!” Her voice mercifully degenerated back into sobs once he started stroking her face and hair with his claw. Just one pluck and… “If you kill me, they’ll pay you nothing!”

She just had to ruin his moment with her disgusting words. He decided to play her game. And why not? True, he was hungry, but not voracious. “So what should I do instead of killing you?” he asked, silently cursing his need to use her grating language.

She flinched at his voice. Or was it his breath? Or maybe seeing a mouth the size of her entire body speak? “You w-won’t kill me…?”

“Oh, now, don’t put words in my mouth, Pearly.” Hilarious! Her face almost lost all fear, trading it for confusion upon hearing such fluency. Worked every time. “All I asked was what you’d have me do instead. It’s up to you.” He punctuated that last with a claw tapping lightly on her sternum. She was bleeding. Whoops! Human skin is too thin for its own good.

“To let me go,” she said slowly, “what would you have me do?”

“No-no-no, I already told you!” She tried, but failed, to push his finger away from her chest as he wiped the blood away, leaving behind a smear. An imperfection, but he didn’t dislike it. “ _You_ get to pick, not me! _You’re_ the one with all the money; I’m just… me!”

“D-don’t…” she whispered, tears rolling down her cheeks and her head shaking. “Not—”

“Not _what?_ ” What did she dread? _Tell me! Pour your fear and trepidation into me! I’ll drink it! GIVE IT TO ME!_

But he would never know. Disappointed, he resolved to enjoy their fleeting time together as much as possible. He wouldn’t let her disrespectful attitude tarnish an otherwise perfect evening.

An hour later, a servant found him floating in the sun-room with the gravity turned off. Tiny water droplets orbited like moons around his immense, winged mass—remnants from a cold shower.

“Excuse me, sir?” the servant said timidly.

“I told you not to disturb me after meals,” he hissed, eyes still closed.

“Apologies, sir, it’s just—”

“What is it? Speak up!”

“A message came in for you, sir, f-from High Command.”

An orange eye opened. “High Command called?” His wings unfurled, stretching almost from one end of the fifty-foot sunroom to the other. The servant recoiled and watched droplets fall in a rain before his master thudded to the floor. “I’ll take the call in my cabin,” he said, shunting the servant to the side on his way out the door.

 _Nargs_ formed the vast majority of the Black Fleet’s workforce. His servant was a Narg, his personal guard were Nargs, the chefs were all Nargs, and the engineers were mainly Nargs. The average Narg ranged from eight to nine feet in height, but he—the commander of this platoon and this vessel—was decidedly _not_ a Narg. He was something other (and greater). Therefore, when he had been assigned command of the _Orpheon_ and its support ships, he had ordered all main passages and chambers refitted to his size. Sure, it required taking about double the sulfur dioxide to pressurize, but it was worth it just to be able to get around.

Around a corner and up a cramped flight of steps, he came to his private chambers. Inside was, among many other personal affects, a secure Q-link to High Command. The only other one on the ship was on the bridge.

Now, there existed only two potential scenarios where High Command would call: either they were altering the current assignment of the _Orpheon_ , or the communications officer on duty had been lax in his reporting schedule. The latter was assuredly not the case, given the harsh penalties for dereliction of duty aboard the _Orpheon_. So…

He growled and licked his teeth before pressing the button.

“Frigate Orpheon, Commander Ridley, responding to summons,” he said with a bow. The Black Fleet’s universal command language, _Urtragh_ , tasted much better on his lips.

“Commander, you will abandon recon operations in your sector and set your destination for the planet Zebes in Sector 45-b,” ordered the frigid voice on the other end of the communicator. “You will make all possible haste. You will enter Zebes’s orbit and await further orders.”

“It will be done,” Ridley replied dryly.

“I have been authorized to pass along the following information at this time. The Federation’s pet, the BSL, has discovered something they refer to as _Metroid_ on the planet SR-388. Metroid was being transported from the planet’s surface to the BSL station orbiting the planet, currently under construction. The transport was intercepted and the Metroid stolen away to Zebes. The Federation blames this attack on ‘pirates’.” Ridley heard the amusement in the speaker’s voice upon using that elementary word. He chortled. “Whoever attacked the transport is posing as our forces and must be apprehended or destroyed. However, this Metroid has become an interest of ours and its unspoiled capture is also a priority. More details will be provided regarding the nature of Metroid to you once you reach Zebes. The Federation is aware of the imposters’ base on Zebes; you are cleared to engage any and all Federation forces you encounter during the assignment. You have your orders. High Command has spoken.”

Ridley bowed again. Of course, no image had appeared on his plate, but he knew they could see him. A smile spread over his beak-like face and he licked his teeth again. It’d be a few days’ journey, so he might as well enjoy himself while he could.

After sending the change in plans to the bridge, he spoke into the intercom: “Commander Ridley to Storage Block G; send a small one to my dining room—send the youngest.”

 

* * *

 

Everything shook when Chairman Hardy slammed his pudgy fist down on the desk. “What do you mean, _we only got one!?_ ”

“I mean exactly that, sir,” his secretary, tall body and tall hair, said stiffly, then added, “and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t take that tone with me. I’m only the messenger and you have your blood pressure to think of.” She strutted out upon his wave of dismissal, leaving him a single holopad. He glared at it—through it, out into the bright, neon cityscape of Daiban beyond his office window.

“ _One_ fucking response… Bloody hell,” he growled.

His eyes roved over the holopad’s data, displaying the dossier of a bounty hunter, but he wasn’t reading. He wasn’t even trying. The situation was a mess. One fuck-up after another, and now this! All because democracy—God-blessed, hand-to-your-heart, sing-along-and-wipe-your-ass democracy—was a battleship made out of Swiss cheese. Give the people the power and they’ll make something wonderful. They’ll also leak everything everywhere all the time.

Had he really expected anything different? BSL was civilian—a private corporation—so they could only be controlled up to a certain point. Beyond that, everyone either yelled “Fascist!” or “Socialist!” and then here come the pitchforks.

And Howell’s department was worse than BSL! Not in terms of disregard for federal oversight, but the leaks had certainly come from there. Way the hell out there in the sticks, with half the Force calling their families every other day for the sole purpose of opening their fat mouths and spewing classified information all over the ether.

So of _course_ the entire fucking galaxy knew about the research on SR-388, the discovery of the Metroid (That’s not even the right name! They’re just on the receiving end of a bad game of _telephone_!), the attack on the transport, Zebes, and now the Force’s search for bounty hunters. Magnificent!

God- _DAMN_ , what a mess!

Hardy caught himself grinding his teeth and counted to ten. It didn’t do much, but at least he was calm enough now to read the dossier.

 

_Galactic Federal Police_

_Office of Chairman of Galactic Peace Rhys Hardy_

_File H-13576_

_Record of person(s) holding bounty license under A37, S12, FedCon_

_Name on record: Samus Aran (LID#CHZ)                                                DRDOB: 8-6-207 GA_

“What the--?” he mumbled, squinting at the text. _LID#CHZ_ … _CHZ_ was the linguistic ID for Chozodic—Chozo language. “Well that can’t be right…” and he was up, out of his office, and standing before his secretary’s desk in a flash. She looked up with forced politeness. “This here says he’s a Chozo! The Chozo don’t have bounty hunters—they don’t even have a militia!”

Frowning, the secretary took the holopad and, within a few seconds, handed it back, shaking her head. “Sir,” she said calmly, “please read the whole dossier. She’s not a Chozo; she’s human. She just has a Chozo name.”

“Human? She?” Hardy took the holopad back and skimmed through it.

_K-2L… Human… Sex: F… Raised by Chozo on planet Zebes… Enlisted in 14 th Federal Police Cadet Corps… Graduated top of class… SAPSF Alpha… Almost exclusively works in Duskverge clusters…_

Hardy remembered K-2L. Pirates had raided that little mining colony twenty-four years ago, leaving the planetoid not only devoid of life but with a crumbling outer crust and a deteriorating orbit. _Bloodbath_ , he thought, _no small wonder she enlisted_. But then, why quit to become a bounty hunter? An officer in the Force sees double the action against pirates any bounty hunter ever would. Hardy made his way back to his desk slowly, deep in thought.

And why work in the Duskverge of all places? Of all star systems in the galaxy, those in the Duskverge Expanse had one of the lowest reports of pirate activity. It didn’t add up. Girl gets a chip on her shoulder from the raid on K-2L, joins up with the good guys to fight back, quits after four years, and lives like a bum in the ass-end of nowhere? Unless she just couldn’t hack it. But, then again, washouts don’t make it through training in the first place.

Out of everything, only one item made sense: Zebes. She lived there. Now, she hears it’s occupied by pirate scum, so here she comes, racing back to make sure she doesn’t lose another home planet.

Hardy heaved a sigh and rubbed his nose. It didn’t matter. She was the only one who responded; she was all the buffer they had before committing their own.

“S’better than nothing…” and he made the call.


	2. The Calm

“This is DIN. Good morning; it is currently ten-o-clock, Pentilis eighth, 235 here in Etváçous-Daiban City. I’m Harriet Bonn—”

“And I’m Diegus Starson.”

“Welcome to Interstellar Sparks where we bring you the top, up-to-date headline stories from across the galaxy. Today, our top story comes from new developments in the ongoing crisis on Zebes. Five hours ago, sources inside the Syracuse Ravine Federal Police Headquarters on Ogygia confirmed that Sector Chief Vincent Howell has given up operational command of the Zebes crisis. Reports over the last five weeks suggested Howell and his department may have been negligent in their handling of classified information—most notably, the plans to hire bounty hunters as a first wave in the assault against the pirate stronghold. Senior Federal Agent Khier-Palisque, an Al-Jauzan, has been sent to Ogygia to take over operational command from Sector Chief Howell. Khier-Palisque joined the Force in 226 and has overseen multiple operations against the Space Pirates.

“Protests continue outside the Tramorine Building, headquarters of the Federal Police here on Daiban, as well as in front of Congressional Tower. And as the demonstrators question the Federation’s choice to use paid contractors as front-line soldiers, others still demand destruction of newly-discovered Metroid species on SR-388.

“Chairman Vogl has yet to issue a statement on the situation. Representatives of Biologic Space Labs, which discovered the Metroid, have also declined comment, saying only that further information cannot be provided to the public until security lockdown has lifted from their SR-388 satellite station.

“We will keep you informed as new developments unfold on this issue. Now we go to interstellar traffic with Darius Sylvan.”

 

* * *

 

Syracuse Ravine, Duskverge Expanse, Orion Spur, the Perseus and Sagittarius Prominences, the Core Quadrants, and the North and South Bars; these were just a few of the hundreds of jurisdictional sectors of the Milky Way Galaxy. While the vertical cities grew ever taller on Earth (nestled in the center of the Orion Spur) and galactic politics ground on ceaselessly on Daiban (itself the only planet in the unincorporated Capitol System), a veritable swarm of Galactic Federal Police ships converged on the Syracuse Ravine sector, near the very edge of the galaxy. Each ship on its own could house a small terrestrial army, but no soldiers went into the SR sector—only officers of the Force. And none of these great ships, loaded to the brim and armed to the teeth, went anywhere near the Brinstar Cluster, home to planets Zebes and SR-388. It may as well have been a black hole—get too close, and…

Ships, weapons, equipment, and personnel had come from all across the galaxy. Jurisdiction be damned; the Federation was going to win this one. One ship in particular had come all the way from the Duskverge Expanse, on the opposite side of the galaxy. It had been a long time since the ship’s lone occupant had been in this sector of space. It’d been longer still since she’d deigned to take orders from the Force. Desperate times, desperate measures.

 

Seventy days ago, Samus Aran had been burning a hole in space. She was hot on the trail of a seemingly vacant escape pod. Such an endeavor wasn’t unusual; pods could be stripped for parts. But Samus was a hunter, not a scavenger. She was hunting this pod, just as she’d hunted down and slaughtered the pirate craft which ejected it just prior to its starfall. She’d made sure it was the only pod ejected.

Long-distance thermals showed it cold all the way through. But pirates came in a variety of shapes, sizes, and electromagnetic emissions. She watched it swing around a Lagrange point and start circling a little, brown gas giant. At any point, the pod’s theoretical occupants could activate the rudimentary drive and reposition into orbit around one of the many moons orbiting the planet. Samus watched silently, waiting, daring them to do it.

That’s when the call came in. It came from the only terrestrial planet in the Podunk system—clearly, the only Q-link in local space. Speed-of-light delayed delivery by fifty-three hours, but nothing between modern physics and arcane witchcraft could have delayed her instant response. She shot back a confirmation of reception and an agreement of terms, then jerked her little ship in a one-eighty and shoved out of the system at full blast.

Space Pirates had taken Zebes.

 

She had forced herself to sleep during transit along the inertialess tollway. Her mind had screamed at her: _Don’t sleep now! How could you? They are dying! Your family is being slaughtered!_ It was no use. At this point, everything must be automatic. She must be systematic. She would sleep as the ship slid well beyond the speed of light through that narrow tube snaking between the stars. Needless fretting must not take hold in her mind.

 

Now, space was packed so full from the influx you could look out a window and actually see the driveflame streaks trailing behind other ships. Over half of them were converging on the same destination: Ogygia, the only habitable moon of the titanic Calypso II. One after the other the ships entered Ogygia’s orbit, dropped off their equipment, and took off again. Meanwhile, several hundred ships orbited Calypso II itself, each waiting her turn.

“Unknown St. Louis, unknown St. Louis, you have entered restricted federal space. Turn back now or transmit security code.” Two Federal Police cruisers had flanked her vessel. She punched in the security code before they finished their warning. A pause, then, “Code confirmed, hunter Aran. We will escort you to the moon’s surface. Do not deviate from course; do not open any weapons ports you may have on your vessel; do not attempt communications with other vessels. Keep this communications channel open at all times during transit.”

_Nothing’s changed. All this prep, all this time, all this money. They’ll lose. They have no idea._

Inside a star system, travel has to be done by reaction drives or nothing at all. Space has to be silky-smooth for warp drives to function. If there’s any gravitational distortion of space’s fabric near the path (even something as small as Earth’s moon), a warp drive will snag like a vacuum cleaner on a wrinkled rug. So warp drives are strictly interstellar, which makes in-system travel much more arduous.

Not even Bussard ramjets can operate in-system. There’s plenty of hydrogen in any given star system, to be sure, but only in addition to myriad of other, heavier elements. A ramjet can’t filter out all that other junk.

Space-warp travel, Bussard ramjet propulsion, and reaction drives are all bound by the laws of special relativity, same as (most) everything else. However, of these three, warp travel is the only way to get around the most annoying Einsteinian implication: the cosmic speed limit. Neither ramjets nor reaction drives can move you any faster than the speed of light, although ramjets can get you close, if given enough time.

Samus had mercifully granted herself seventy days of mental quiet during the 23,000 parsec journey across Federation Space. Now, the last two-billion kilometers until Ogygia would take fifteen hours under main thrusters. Time enough for Samus Aran to mull things over. She sure-as-shit wasn’t going sleep with this much traffic.

First-things-first, the old worry: Why hadn’t she heard anything from Old Bird or Grey Voice? _If they were dead, I’d know it,_ she assured herself. It didn’t bring much comfort. Zebes had been taken— _Zebes,_ of all places! Why the hell did it have to be there?

She deliberately relaxed her grip on the arm of her chair; she stilled the restless tapping of her foot against the side of the control board; she took a deep breath and recalled words spoken into her mind from years past.

_If the plights of one planet trouble you, think instead on the plight of the galaxy. Imagine the wound it endures that such evil exists at all. This conflict is larger than any one place or people._

Shame. _Easy for you to say; humans don’t have your imagination._ After all, wasn’t that why she’d left in the first place? Only human… mostly. She could never “envision the cosmic all” the way the Chozo could. But she could very clearly envision the Re-Dac trash—pirate scum—burning its way across the galaxy— _her_ galaxy— _her_ Zebes— _HER HOME—again—and AGAIN—AND—_

More shame, followed by more deliberate calm. She’d been taught better than this. _Keep your head, keep your heart, hold onto them_ would be Old Bird’s advice. Grey Voice would just say: _Snap out of it, you have work to do_. She smiled. There was comfort in either approach. _You two had better be alive,_ she thought, _I don’t think I’d be able to face reality if…_

There’s no use in concentrating on potential traumas. That way lies madness (she knew all too well). She mentally shifted herself to consider the other nagging question: _how_ had this happened? It didn’t look it, but Zebes was a veritable fortress. When the Chozo had come from SR-388 to their new home, they’d done more than just build a few houses and temples. Entire layers of the crust had been altered, shifted, broken up and rearranged. Zebes was carefully-crafted patchwork. Between the planetary reconstruction, the atmospheric terraforming, and the floral and faunal genetic pacification, the Chozo really did a number on Zebes, making it wholly their own. Nothing had been left to chance; no cracks in the seemingly-natural security had been allowed.

And then there was Mother. Decades ago, at the height of galactic expansion, a single organic mind was already incapable of grasping the scale of the Federation, so they designed machines to do it for them. Organic supercomputers— _Aurora Units_. Each was simultaneously grown like a lifeform and built like a machine. One such unit had been installed on Zebes to facilitate the sharing of knowledge between the Chozo and the Federation. It came to be called Mother and ended up doing a lot more than share knowledge. Mother was the brain of Zebes; she ran everything from celestial object tracking to weather modulators to sanitation. She also ran the planetary defense systems.

During Samus’s fourteen years spent on Zebes (sure, she’d been unconscious for five), she’d never been allowed to explore the defense systems. Mother had never been too trusting of Samus. But you can’t really hold a computer’s programming against it; after all, who’d want a trusting brain in charge of defending the planet?

Obviously, it hadn’t been enough. Samus stewed in her disgust, ruminating on the thought of those filthy pirates walking _those_ halls, touching _those_ walls… infecting _her_ home. It made her want to vomit.

 _They’ll pay_ , she let her mind growl, indulging in the hate. _They’ll know fear. I’ve seen it before. I’ll teach them, just like I taught them in Duskverge. I’ll clean this sector… wipe it clean… give it a goddamn acid bath… smoke out the vermin… burn them as they flee… burn them all… and piss on the ashes._

 

Just under half-way; time to flip. The star Calypso’s gravity clung increasingly tighter as the ship approached. Accelerating half-way there, decelerating the remaining half wouldn’t cut it; it was closer to 40% accel, 60% decel. Any combination of fractions wasted time. It wouldn’t take so long if warp drive actually gave the ship a velocity of its own, but it doesn’t. Warp drive moves space, not the ship, so you end up dropping out of warp pretty much stationary.

Where once the driveflame pointed behind the ship, now, after flipping it for deceleration, it pointed straight at the destination. All around her, other ships were doing the same, including the cruisers flanking her.

 

* * *

 

A little brandy never hurt anyone. Howell tipped a little more into his glass and stowed the bottle in its drawer. What would he do if one of his officers saw him like this? Would he really care? Hell, they’d probably understand. It’d take some kind of saint to get operational command of the largest anti-pirate operation in a decade, lose it to a Daiban bureaucrat inside a month, and take it in stride. Howell was no saint; he knew it, his officers knew it, his own family knew it. So what’s a drink now and then?

 _Not demoted, though. There’s something,_ he thought bitterly. They’d left him one job at least. As some kind of sick joke, _he_ would be the one handling the bounty hunter. He chuckled, toasted fate, and tossed the brandy back.

A knock at his door. “It’s open,” he called, absently sliding his empty glass behind a stack of books.

“Sir,” began the saluting figure framed in his door, “she just entered atmo; ETA: ten minutes.”

“Right. Confirm ID _before_ she’s out of de-con. If she wants to wear that armor inside the facility, tell her _tough shit_. Far as I’m concerned, she’s a Re-Dac spy until I see her kill a pirate with my own two eyes. And even then, she’s still a bounty hunter. You keep her under guard all the way here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, and if Khier has anything to say about the procedures, you tell him—you tell him I said—if he wants to take this one off my hands, he can be my guest. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

 

* * *

 

Landing procedures hadn’t changed in the slightest. She’d never done it with pulse cannons trained on her before, but the theory was still the same as it was five years ago. Samus checked the g-counter: 0.43 g and stable. It helped to know what sort of gravity you were stepping into before you tried to take a step. She heard a mechanical whirr, then a solid _thunk_ against the top of her ship, immediately followed by a _ding_ from the controls.

The radio piped up: “Secure coupling complete. Please exit the craft through the main hatch on top and enter the decontamination and security screening chamber. Please leave all armaments, food, drink, and nonessential items in the craft.” _All armaments—figures._

Up, though the main hatch, and into the sterile, off-white set of plastic boxes, Samus played along. Each chamber was just big enough for her to stand in; they all smelled like wax. The first door greeted her with a message: _For your own safety, please select species before entering the decontamination chamber. If you require assistance, press the yellow button to speak with a security officer._ With _Homo Sapiens_ highlighted, Samus stepped into the next room.

“Decontamination in progress,” announced a robotic voice.

“Hunter Aran?” asked a decidedly not robotic voice. Samus looked up at the camera in the corner. She nodded. “Remain still, please—we’re checking ID.” A pause. “Okay y—”

“Decontamination complete,” the synthesized voice cut in.

“You’re clear to enter the facility.” The door before her slid open, revealing a blue-grey corridor complete with a pair of armed guards.

“We’ll take you to the sector chief,” one of them said dully. “I’ll lead, you’ll follow, and my partner will follow you. Stay between us and _don’t_ make any sudden movements.”

She fell in line. _Have to hand it to them,_ she thought, _at least they’re taking this whole thing seriously. I feel like I’m under arrest, but it’s better than letting any random stranger wander through the base._ She smiled inwardly at the word _stranger_. That’s what she was now. Why did that give her such a knot in her stomach?

The base wasn’t large, but it bustled with activity. Outside, through every window, ships could be seen taking off and landing constantly in the faint, rusty light of the nearby red dwarf. The hum of their thrusters vibrated the walls and floor every few seconds. Inside, Samus and her twin slab companions had to weave a path through the tight corridors. Officers of the Force ran everywhere, most carrying holopads or equipment, but more than a few loaded down with veritable towers of steaming coffee cups. Work spilled out from every side room into the halls. They even passed through a fully-armed and armored squad of SAPSF operatives doing weapons checks. Samus looked them over as subtly as she could, but found nobody she recognized. She did notice the new logo painted bright and bold on each left pauldron. _I liked the old one better_.

All human. Samus had forgotten what it felt like to be surrounded by so many Tellurians. Everywhere she looked it was like an overload. And the smell… all the same—no variety. Just human. Just Federation, which, to the rim sectors like Duskverge, was synonymous with human.

Memories flooded back to her from her days in the Force. She remembered her old team and what it felt like during training. It felt like this. She could see their faces imposed on the blurred visages of passing officers: Mauk, Kreatz, Anthony, Adam… Ian. She swallowed hard, pushing that particular memory down.

Would Adam be here? He was sector chief now, somewhere between Orion and the Capitol. This wasn’t his jurisdiction, but did that matter? Of course it didn’t, but he wasn’t the type to abandon his post because of someone else’s mess. No, he wouldn’t be here and that was fine by her. Adam Malkovich could fight the pirates his way; Samus Aran could fight them the right way.

 

* * *

 

“Come in,” Howell said. He remained seated behind his desk as the guards led the hunter in. Right away, he noticed how pale she was. The dossier wasn’t kidding when it described her as _White-Caucasian_. Race, as such a clearly-defined feature, was rare. Had her parents been some of those crazies? Wanting to keep the _racial purity_ from before the Galactic Advent? But no—they’d been colonials—K-2L, so that didn’t fit. Anyway, she was clearly unarmed. He waved the guards away.

He let her stand there. However he looked at her, he wouldn’t say from first-glance that she was a bounty hunter. She stood six-foot flat, putting her just under average height for a human woman. Her hair was too long, even up in that ponytail. Clothes weren’t anything special—a tight, worn-blue short-sleeve shirt and baggy, pocket-ridden flight-utility pants. Skin too pale, eyes too bright—nothing intimidating about her. And she was attractive—not fiercely or intentionally so—just above average. But even that was undermined; no makeup, moles on her face and arms. Where her sleeves ended, he could even see unshaven hair lightly covering her taut muscles. Except, the hair wasn’t evenly-distributed. Her right arm had patches (scars?) where the hair abruptly ended. And she smelled like… well, he couldn’t tell what, but it wasn’t appealing. So she wasn’t using sex appeal to throw off suspicion.

All-in-all, she seemed… off. Even the way she stood—arms crossed, hunched forward as if bracing her back against a cold wind. She wasn’t trying to stand that way—she was clearly relaxed in that stance. There was something wrong with this one and Howell hoped to ninth hell it wouldn’t cause a problem.

“So you’re Aran?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Am I saying that right? Aran, not Aaron?”

She nodded, looking around the office.

“I’m Sector Chief Vincent Howell. Both planets in question fall within my jurisdiction. Chairman Vogl seems to think we should give you a crack at Zebes before we go down there. What do you think?”

She shrugged.

“You don’t talk much, do you?”

Blinking and a stony face.

“Look, I’m gonna skip the bullshit; we both know this is a suicide mission. Zero percent chance of success.” Was that a smile? “We sent you all the information on these pirates, that planet, and those… metdroid things. Just like the rest of the damn galaxy, you know about BSL’s excavations on 388, you know about the attack, and you know we tracked the pirates to Zebes. Only a goddamn fool would attempt a run on that base on their own. But that’s your mission.”

Nothing.

“Okay, then, we’ll get down to it,” he continued after a pause. “Take a seat. There’s no way you’re making it to that planet’s surface, but I’m supposed to give you a rundown of mission parameters anyway. The targets are called MET-droids. Or Metroids. I personally don’t give a shit what you call them.” _That_ got something out of her. Howell smiled grimly. “That’s right, once you make it through the impossible defenses and get down to the surface you can’t reach, the primary mission you can’t complete is _not—_ I repeat, _not_ —to destroy the pirates. We’ll take care of that. The Metdroids are vulnerable to extreme low temperatures. BSL gave us a range: somewhere between 80 and 170 K. You get ‘em down to those temperatures and a simple explosive should do the trick to shatter the sonsofbitches. Otherwise, they’re impervious to all known forms of weapons-fire. Any questions so far?”

She spoke, her voice deep and smooth, but too quiet—almost a mumble: “What about the Aurora? What about Mother?” He couldn’t quite place her accent. It certainly wasn’t in the Solar vicinity; it almost sounded Zeggish, but without all the spitting.

“We have no reason to believe Aurora Unit 002 is still active; no contact. You called it… what? Mother?”

“The Chozo named her that.”

Howell preempted her next question. “No word from them either. I’d just as soon ask you where they’ve gone, but—”

“Wait,” she sat forward. Now Howell saw the bounty hunter with that look in her eyes. “No contact from _anyone?_ What about the embassy?”

“No, no word. The Chozo race has gone silent.” Howell could almost feel sorry for her—almost. “In any case, I want to make one thing clear: your mission is not a rescue mission. You find Chozo alive down there, great. Get them out if you can, but _only after_ eradicating those Metdroid things.”

Samus held him in a steely glare. Did he deserve it? Everybody _knew_ the Chozo were dead on Zebes. Pirates left no survivors. He shifted in his seat and waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not getting anywhere near the surface anyhow. Look, Aran, I’m supposed to give you this Metdroid-hunting mission, but let’s face facts: you’re here to do flybys on the planet and draw fire. Best I can ask of you is to not get shot down. And _don’t_ give me that look; we’re paying you in full up-front. Nobody here is rooting against you.”

“It’s not like that.” Her glare remained. “I don’t care about the money. I have enough.” _Doesn’t show,_ Howell thought savagely. “I need assurance that the Federation is doing everything in its power to investigate the disappearance of the Chozo. I can’t do it while I’m at work on Zebes.”

“We’re doing all we can, Aran. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a little preoccupied here.” A staring contest ensued. Did she really expect him to leave Zebes entirely to her and go looking for the birds? Maybe if he agreed, he could get her out of his office that much sooner. “I’ll put an investigative unit on it. Happy?”

Without a word, she stood and went to the door. Howell radioed the guards. She was walking out when he said, “Just a fly-by, Aran. I don’t want theatrics and we don’t need crazy.”

She turned and, somehow, looked offended. “I’ll do my job. You do yours.” And she was gone.

“This is gonna be a disaster,” Howell growled to himself as he sank back into his chair. He reached for the glass again.

 

* * *

 

It took everything Samus had in her to keep pace with the guards. They were too slow— _way too slow, dammit!_ Where would she run to? To her ship, to complete her mission; or to the nearest phone, to demand a full-scale investigation into the Chozo’s whereabouts? She’d have to talk to Keaton (was she still on Daiban?) and call in all the favors she’d stored up until now, and then some. She didn’t much like the idea of being in debt to the Federation, but _anything_ was better than not knowing. One of them had to care, right? Screw it, if they didn’t, she’d make them. They hadn’t cared enough about the colony worlds before and look how that turned out. That couldn’t happen again—it _wouldn’t_ —she wouldn’t allow it.

But Zebes wasn’t a colony world in the same sense as human colony worlds and the Chozo weren’t a colonizing race. Not anymore. Constituent races were expected to maintain their own territories. Autonomy was important to the Federation, up to the point where it would inconvenience the galaxy at large. So this was different—it _had_ to be. If the entire human race disappeared overnight, the galaxy would sure-as-shit notice! It’d be chaos. Of course, humanity and all its extrasolar _Cognata sapiens_ relations made up a good 60% of the population in Federation Space. _But that shouldn’t matter!_ She couldn’t think of any reason why it would.

She was so ready to break away from the guards and hijack a Q-link to Daiban. She’d fight her way there if need-be. The pirates could wait—the Metroids could wait—Zebes could wait, it was only a place, after all.

She never got the chance. A roadblock appeared before Samus and the guards in the form of a snake rearing out of a low bush. At least, that’s what Al-Jauzans looked like. Their bodies were mostly flat and leech-like, four-square-feet at adulthood, with a foot-high bulge at the front. However they moved along that single, wide foot, it didn’t leave any trails of slime behind. The surface was a forest of leaf-like growths—sensory organs. And out of the top of the front hill rose a thin, serpentine cord, glossy black and man-high. It ended in a tubular protrusion, capped with dull, bull-like horns. A Federal Agent emblem hung like a pendant half-way down the cord.

“Thank you, officers, I’d like a short word with the hunter in priave,” it said, using a smooth, computerized voice emitted from the pendant around its neck (wrist?).

The Al-Jauzan led Samus through several rooms. Its sliding motions looked like a duck swimming in a pond. This had to be the agent sent from HQ to manage the growing shitstorm. She had no choice but to follow; where the guards’ two guns held her in step before, this agent commanded every weapon in the base. Still, she fought down the urge to get out. The last door was closed; the snakehead bowed and its horns clamped onto the handle and proceeded to open the door just as quickly and casually as any human hand. Inside the cramped, half-lit room, Samus found two others: a heavily-bearded man wearing a visitor’s badge and an older woman with a FedSci uniform. Federal Science Commission: the underfunded and understaffed governmental analog of corporations like BSL.

“Please, have a seat,” the Al-Jauzan said. There was only one seat before the table and the other two humans didn’t move. Samus took the hint. Across the table, only the black cord showed, swaying softly and pointing its round mouth at her. Presently, it spoke again: “As you have probably guessed, I am Khier-Palisque, Senior Agent of the Galactic Federal Police. I am in command of this outpost and this operation. The others are Doctors Trey and Marantia of Biologic Space Labs and the Federal Science Commission, respectively. They have requested an audience with you, given your intimate connection with the Chozo people.” _This is it! Maybe I won’t have to do anything—maybe it was just that bastard Howell stonewalling._ “Specifically, they wish to know more about the MET-droid.” _Dammit. That’s what I get for optimism._

“I don’t know anything about that,” Samus said, looking at each of them.

“But surely they must’ve mentioned it?” Dr. Trey stepped closer to the table as he spoke. “Far as we can tell, they abandoned their home planet, leaving those things behind seals and warnings and curses scratched into rock.”

Samus shook her head.

“They’re not a natural species. They were built—designed by someone.”

“Was it the Chozo?” asked Dr. Marantia from the corner.

Samus frowned at her. “I’ve never been to SR-388.”

“No, but you lived on Zebes, among the Chozo for years,” Trey continued. “What can you tell us about that planet and its history? What do _you_ know?”

“I know…” Samus took a second to think carefully. _They really think the Chozo built the Metroids? It’s not impossible… But why? I’m sure they’d ask the same question. What’s important is what they’d do if it turned out to be true. What was the Federation’s statute of limitations on manufacturing bioweapons? Would that even matter, now that those things got out and killed citizens? No, it wouldn’t. They’d go after the Chozo—hold them responsible. Could this be why they’ve disappeared? Guilt? Fear? Shame?_ Her second was up: “I know SR-388—they call it _Genden_ —wasn’t their first home. They came to that world seven thousand years ago. I don’t know why they left their home system; they never told me and I’m not sure if they even know themselves anymore. Fifteen hundred years later, they were in decline—”

“Why? What happened on SR-388?” Trey’s beady eyes were intense.

“If I knew, I’d’ve started there, wouldn’t I?” Samus spat back. “They left it behind and began again on other worlds. Zebes was one of those. They never mentioned anything like the Metroids.” She paused, then added: “And I seriously doubt they created them.”

“Why do you say that?” Marantia asked.

“Obviously,” Trey cut in, “because they’re peaceful… _now_. But they weren’t always, were they, Aran?”

“Peaceful?” Samus struggled with her ire, but got the better of it. She spoke slowly. “They don’t make war, but they are not pacifists. They’re intellectuals. I doubt they created the Metroids because it would be beneath them. They’ve never been stupid enough to create a weapon that would turn against them. They’re smarter than that. That’s my take on the situation. If it isn’t enough for you, then go find the Chozo yourselves and ask them. But I’m done here and I’m leaving.” She stood. The PhDs clearly wanted to stop her, but they said nothing. _And they’d better keep it that way. I’ve had more than enough grilling for today._

She made her way back to her ship. This time, the guards moved behind her until the white-walled docking arm. The base reeked of humans and their incompetence. The walls were too sterile. She needed to get off that moon. She needed to escape before the lie caught up with her. Of course she wasn’t sure about the Chozo and the Metroids. Species change. The Chozo had been warlike in the past, millennia ago.

In her cockpit, she found a blinking light waiting for her, indicating a call. She gritted her teeth and put it onscreen. It was Khier-Palisque.

“Aran. Where are you going?”

“What do you mean? We’re done. I’ve done two briefings— _two_ —and I’m leaving. I told you—”

“You misunderstand. What is your intended course of action?” That hit her in the throat. Until this moment, she hadn’t made up her mind. And, somehow, the Al-Jauzan had seen straight through her. He was good.

“I’m going to Zebes.” Saying it was a relief. It made sense. It was a clear goal and it _was_ home, after all. “Where the hell else would I go?”

If that horned tube-face could smile, it would have. “Good.”

 

* * *

 

Khier-Palisque poked the switch with his snout, ending the call. Out in the hall, the BSL and FedSci doctors continued to argue. He caught a few snippets on his way out. Trey was apparently of the opinion that some sort of split in values or cultural revolution had occurred towards the end of the Chozo’s time on SR-388. Marantia appeared noncommittal, but ultimately loath to entertain such ideas. He was now too far away to discern what she was saying in reply. It might’ve been an interesting debate to hear, but such things had to come second to the job. There were much more pressing matters.

Hardy was on Howell’s screen and the assistant sector chief (what was his name again?) was standing behind his boss when Khier-Palisque slid into the office.

“Looks like you’ve got company,” Hardy said. “How’re things, Khier?”

“Please, sir, I would prefer the use of my full name.” He came right up to the side of Howell’s desk.

“ _Khier_ isn’t your first name?”

“We don’t have first names, sir. We have names, plain and simple. Calling me _Khier_ is loosely comparable to me calling you _Har_ or _Dee_. But, to answer your question, everything is going smoothly so far.”

“Fine.” Hardy was clearly uncomfortable with the difference in culture. Khier-Palisque didn’t quite understand why, given the man’s position. “Howell here was just telling me about that bounty hunter I sent your way. Sorry. Guess you’ll have to make do with her.”

“Why are you sorry, sir?”

Hardy’s shocked expression was mirrored on Howell’s face. “Well hell, agent, we all discussed before how disappointing this turnout is. And what we get is a washout living the easy life in Duskverge.”

“That was the initial assessment, yes, but I have just finished a conversation with the hunter and I believe you have both underestimated her.”

Howell snorted. “You had a _conversation_ ; I interviewed her. She’s a nobody. It was clear from second one she’s let herself go. Khier-Palisque, she’s only here out of some misplaced loyalty to the Chozo.”

“I disagree. She has confidence—a great deal of confidence.”

“So she’s crazy. Chairman Hardy thinks so, too. We were just discussing how something like the raid on K-2L—her _real_ home, not some Chozo colony—scars a person. She’s been living with internal fear for most of her life and she’s never had the opportunity to really deal with it. Look, Khier, I—Khier-Palisque—I’ve seen men and women emotionally wrecked by combat. I don’t blame her for her trauma, but I will hold her responsible if she flies off the handle and ruins this operation.”

“Remember it is _my_ operation, Howell.” Howell glared at the Al-Jauzan’s snout, not realizing he was effectively glaring into his ear. Khier-Palisque always found amusement in a biped’s insistence that the _top_ of a person’s body needed to represent their mind.

“Actually, it’s my operation,” growled Hardy. “I put you in charge to help grease inter-sectorial cooperation. The bounty hunter is still Howell’s command. And I do agree with him. We need contingencies in case she flips.”

“What exactly is your worry, sir? Pirates destroyed her first home and now threaten her second. You can’t possibly think she’d defect.”

“No, but all that time in Duskverge, away from any sort of Black Fleet presence, has no doubt made her forget just how goddamn insidious those pirates are. My worry is she’ll take one look at their defenses—maybe even the ruin and carnage planetside—and panic. Maybe she’ll get shot down, maybe not. Point is, she’ll be jittery and heavily armed. _Not_ a good combination, especially considering the poor sods you’ll have to send to go escort her back.” Howell nodded vehemently at every point Hardy made.

“If you truly believe this is important, sir, I will of course cooperate in these contingency efforts.” Sarcasm was far from foreign to Khier-Palisque, but putting it into auditory form was. Too bad standard-issue vocal synthesizers were so limited. “I’ve come here to discuss other matters. Sir, what are we doing to investigate the Chozo’s disappearance from Federation Space?”

“You, too, agent?” Hardy rubbed his bald head. “Howell’s put his man on it. You still there, son?”

“Yes, sir,” piped up the younger human. He stepped closer to Howell’s side to appear before the screen.

“Here’s the thing,” Hardy began, “if the Chozo are really hiding—if they don’t want you to find them, you won’t. Don’t get your hopes up. They’re the oldest and most advanced race in all of known existence. Hell, if someone told me they could bodily disappear on a whim, I’d consider it. But the bounty hunter was right about one thing: we have to do something about them. How many years have you been with the force, son?”

“Seven years, sir,” Terry replied proudly. Khier-Palisque had only just remembered his name.

“And you’re a pilot?” Terry nodded. “Damn good one from what Howell’s told me. That’s good. This may take you more than a few hops before getting a clear story. You’ll report to Howell like normal, but you’ll be on your own, outside your assigned sector. Khier-Palisque here is a Federal Agent, so he’s used to that sort of thing. Ask him if you need advice or if you find any doors you can’t open on your own. Khier-Palisque, you up for being on-call for the kid?”

“I am.” He turned to point his snout at Terry and inclined it. An alien gesture to him, but humans seemed to appreciate it.

“Start at their embassy on Daiban. It’s empty—”

“Daiban, sir?” Terry’s eyes blinked in excitement behind his glasses.

“Yeah, Daiban. The capital, y’know? Anyway, the Chozo embassy is empty—has been for three months. But that’s your best bet to find a clue. Well, you up for this, kid?”

“Yes, sir,” Terry nodded with a bright grin. It was infectious. But all Khier-Palisque could think was, _Why him? There are so many good agents in the Force; why not tap one of them for this?_ But then he remembered his own recruitment into the agent program. He’d help the youth all he could. Actually, no, he’d hold back just enough. The boy will have to shine on his own.


	3. Prodigal

Another set of cruisers escorted Samus to the limits of the Calypso system, providing eleven sleepless hours of outbound acceleration. At least Khier-Palisque had had the common decency to give her a clear shot; they didn’t run into any inbound traffic. The snake wasn’t afraid of pissing off a few transport pilots to get the job done. Samus considered thanking him once she was done fuming about both of those time-wasting meetings on Ogygia. If he kept the Force out of her way during the mission. If Howell did his job. If she even completed the mission. If she survived.

Eleven hours… At least it wasn’t fifteen. You saved a lot of time when all you had to do was accelerate away from a gravity well. Once warp kicked in, velocity inside the fold became moot. It was a handy way to brake instantly and reset your velocity to zero. Sure enough, once Calypso’s gravitational distortion of space had just about leveled out, all three ships prepared to engage their warp engines. Samus wouldn’t see it, but the cruisers would simply flick on warp, maybe reposition for pericenter, then flick it off again and begin another fifteen-hour accel/decel set down towards Ogygia.

Samus went through the motions: check reaction thrusters (off; no acceleration), check speed (steady at 76,681,158 m/s), check cabin pressure (1215.9 mbar and holding), check cabin gravity (1.4 g akeel), check fuel gages (105 L Fuel Gel and afloraltite batteries at 67%). Finally, she checked the most important instrument in warp-travel-safety: the ligometer. It measured spatial distortions (usually caused by large masses’ gravitational fields) and rendered a number. If the number was greater than one Lg, space was not “flat” enough to use the warp drive; anything less than 0.9 Lg was generally guaranteed to provide smooth warp travel. The ligometer assured Samus of a local space distortion of 0.87 Lg. It even had a little, glowing green indicator above it (dull red if the ligs were too high). She activated the interstellar course she’d plotted out during outbound acceleration and turned the safety key to horizontal. A button labeled _Warp_ lit up. She pushed it in until it clicked into place.

Imagine the naked stars, with no atmosphere to make them twinkle or hide the weaker, more distant ones. A sky full of little pinprick points of brilliance. Now imagine a perfect circle of black, starless void expanding outwards from the very center of your vision, pushing each little star out before it. It’s as though the stars are set on a convex, black surface, then let to roll down and away from the center. This happens in a hemisphere before you. If you track any one of the stars on its progress, you’ll notice two things: one, whatever its color was before, it steadily turns blue; and two, it dims darker and darker, until, finally reaching the edge of its hemisphere, it becomes invisible. The same process happens to the stars behind you, except they fade to dull red before disappearing. All of the stars in space recede along a sphere, with you at the center. They all end up in a vertical ring, with you as the _Vitruvian Man_ , watching them die out one by one. The ones to go first are the ones which were already at or close to that ring. The last ones to go are the ones which were once directly in front and behind you. The only evidence of the stars’ existence is the vertical ring, now a hazy magenta, more purplish facing front, more reddish facing back. The rest is black. The rest is stripped void.

That is what she saw every time she pushed that button in. She watched it now, passively, no longer appreciating the haunting, cataclysmic beauty of it. She just watched to make sure nothing went wrong. It never did. These days, they made warp drives to work and to last.

She pushed off of the chair, lightly, with her fingers, and floated up. Catching the handle to the right of one of the upper monitors, she turned to face the rest of the cabin. St. Louis-Class crafts didn’t offer much in the way of living space. Most of the interior was the control board, shaped as an arc before the pilot’s chair. Everything else—lavatory, kitchen, sleep pod, maintenance access—was crammed behind the chair. Samus aimed herself at the sleep pod and shoved. Ten feet later, she was on the other side of her little world.

She’d eaten during the in-system transit, but she fleetingly considered a snack before sleeping. She thought better of it. Even for someone who spends so much time in the space between solid ground, eating and drinking while weightless is never optimal. No artificial gravity during warp with only one Mura generator onboard. Sometimes, Samus cursed her ship for being so small. With two Muras, a ship can engage warp with one while using the other as an auxiliary to keep artificial gravity going. But this wasn’t a luxury craft. Someday, maybe, she’d make more than just enough to scrape by. Then she’d ditch the St. Louis for something more substantial. As if to make a case-and-point in the argument with herself, she smiled darkly at the armory on her right. The passenger compartment and all its amenities rotted somewhere in a landfill just so she could have enough place to jam in the armory. It would’ve been nice to at least have kept the holochess set.

The sleep pod’s glass lid slid open and she slipped in. Five days she’d be in there, assuming nothing went wrong to wake her up. Worry and doubt encroached on her mind as the lid slid shut again. It was always at its worst just before and just after sleep. And metacognition didn’t help her case one bit; she worried about worrying and fretted that, maybe, this one time, the tension inside her would keep the sleep from coming.

That was normal, too. She breathed deep the scentless drug and pushed emotion out of her mind. The less you allow yourself to feel before losing consciousness, the less you dream. At least, that’s how it worked with sleep pods. Before she had time to analyze those thoughts, sleep took her and threw her down out of consciousness.

One final whisper crept through her mind, almost a prayer: _Don’t let me dream_.

 

* * *

 

 _Orpheon_ devoured the ether. Her mouth was a cosmic engine, a dark design older than any soul aboard. Narg crews worshiped the engine; it served as both god and alter. _Ygsha_ , they named it. A sexless parasite god, latched to the heart of each ship—itself a demigoddess. Ygsha lived to drive the ships forward, asking only one thing: to devour space. The engines nourished the ship-maidens with their refuse. And the ships bore the Nargs, birthing them onto world-after-world from their iron wombs. Eventually, the Ygsha would unite and a war would flare up around their ultimate gluttony. They would eat the universe, only for their essence to be undone upon consuming the goddess of death herself.

 _Her_ self. That was a curious, quite recent mutation in Urtragh mythology aboard the _Orpheon_. The goddess of death had, until recent years, been traditionally sexless, just like Ygsha. Then, something changed. High Command issued an order to the commander of the _Orpheon_ to hunt down and destroy their new enemies in the sector of Federation Space known as _Duskverge_. Ridley obeyed and led his loyal crew there to do battle.

Only, there was no battle. They found a sea of graves where once the Black Fleet had ridden free, feared and respected as devils of the void. The cursed Federation had no hand in this; for them, even a defeat was something to boast over their comms channels and news programs. Some other, silent menace had ravaged this sector. Clearly, then, Ridley understood why he had been chosen to lead the avenging force. It takes a monster to bring down a monster. And Ridley was just that. He had no delusions, unlike the sycophants endlessly clawing their way up the ranks around him. There would be a battle in Duskverge; he needed only draw out the hunters.

When it happened, none were prepared. The trap was double-blind. The humans aboard the rigged, marooned ship thought they had finally dealt in enough blood to appease their pirate lords. So the distress call following the failure of their sabotaged craft was genuine. _She_ responded. Yes, there it was—the moment the Nargs, Ridley, High Command, all of them—they understood their enemy. They watched the live feed of their target as she walked those halls, as she used cold force to uncover the treachery of the marooned crew… as she destroyed them with such erotic ferocity as to stir even Ridley’s veteran sadism. He could practically taste their agony and demise through the screen. Truly, this lone warrior was the _Hunter_ they sought. Truly, this was the goddess of death.

To hunt her was their mission. To slay her was their unendurable lust. They would be legends, earning an eternity among the pantheon of stars.

 _Feast on our entrails, we should have blown that fucking ship when we had the chance!_ Ridley stewed in his rage, which had only compounded on itself since their reassignment. He believed in no gods, nor any power higher than the Chain of Command. But he believed in destiny. Fate had spared him alone when the rest of his race had been doomed to the ignominy of extinction. Fate had granted him victory at times, stolen it at others. He simultaneously and continuously wrestled and respected his destiny. But sometimes it could be so intolerable!

To detonate the trap they had laid specifically to observe the Hunter would mean, in the unlikely event of her survival, she would be aware of their knowledge of her. When they killed her, it would be a strike from silence and with an absolute assurance of her defeat. Patience, observation, carefully-measured malice—that was the Black Fleet way.

Why? Why-why- _WHY_ had they pulled him away from his prey to send him across the galaxy on a completely different assignment? Just the thought that another would take that life… It was enough to make him want to strangle something (good thing they brought along a full stock of snacks for him to play with). He wanted her so bad he could taste her disgusting human sweat.

 _My dear,_ his mind spoke to the darkness of his chambers, _fight! Hold them off! Be the warrior—be the goddess they think you are! I shall return to you. I will be the one to do it. It has to be that way. Promise me… no one before me… Your life is mine._

 _Orpheon_ charged on. They would arrive at Zebes in eighty-one of the Federation’s days to complete this insignificant little favor. Then they could return to Duskverge to continue the hunt and claim their eternal glory.

 

* * *

 

Terry grinned from ear-to-ear like a kid on Christmas. He was going to Daiban! He could hardly believe it. He looked like a dumbass, but he didn’t care. If he didn’t have the worst singing voice in the galaxy, he would’ve belted one out right there in his little apartment. He didn’t, of course. But nothing was stopping him now! With the cockpit sound system blaring, he sang along to _Our Lotion (Potential Crustacean?) of Familiar Endurance_ (a rough translation of the original Mallip title). Tune was catchy as hell, but the lyrics were made up almost entirely of pop-culture references and quotes from Ava, a planet he’d never visited.

The rear cabin speakers would be going, too, if he wasn’t giving a few FedSci people a ride to Capitol. He flirted with the idea of opening the door a crack—make it look like an accident—but nah, forget it. There were better ways to die in space than being strangled from behind by a creaky old professor with a more refined auditory palate.

Six more hours until warp, then about forty minutes of that to get around to the inertialess onramp. And then it would be smooth sailing for thirty-seven-and-a-half days all the way to the Federation’s Capitol System and to Kallie.

 

* * *

 

Twenty-four years before BSL’s fateful excavation of SR-388 and the subsequent discovery of Metroids, Sam wanted to go home. This wasn’t home; it smelled wrong—old and wrong. It was dark, dry, cold, and filled with the sound of her breathing. Shallow, halted breaths. Sometimes a whimper or a sob.

She felt like she did just after a bath, when the touch of any little thing—even clothes—crawled across skin unnaturally. If she could just go home, she could take a bath… a warm bath… with mommy. They could sing the bath song together, play the submarine game, compare hair color.

Where was mommy? Sam looked around helplessly and uselessly. She wasn’t here. Instead, she saw the bird-masks staring down at her, like statues in a dark room. She couldn’t stand to look at them for more than a fleeting moment, so she again studied the floor. It looked like frozen dirt, but felt like plastic. Should she lay down on it? Is it safe?

She tried, curling up to hug her knees for lack of her Pyonchi to snuggle. All at once she remembered that she’d tried this several times before and was met with the same sensation: the ground was rough, hard, and you were better off just sitting. Emptiness and frustration forced tears from her eyes again. There was nothing to do but sit there and cry. Mommy or Daddy had to hear her—they just _had_ to. Then they’d go home. She’d have a bath. Daddy would take a nap with her. _Why_ weren’t they _here?_ Why the bird-masks? Why the plastic-dirt-floor? Why the smothering silence? _Why why why why why…_

Sleep brought fire. Fire and the smell of sweat and wet leaves. Blood throttled every sound and smell. Everything was choked and tainted by a harsh iron corridor. Forcing in, then out. In, out. In was squeezing under the bed to retrieve an escaped toy; out was running through a narrow path between untamed trees.

No! She mustn’t sleep. _Those_ dreams would claw at her mind. Claw… _No!_ She hugged her knees so tight against her cheeks she could feel her teeth resist from the other side. It felt comforting—present. Maybe she could chew the insides of her cheeks through until she met the flesh of her knees. Then, just keep chewing. Swallow it all up, all inside, deep down, where loneliness can’t exist for the metamorphic heat and pressure.

“Mommy…” she whimpered through a rattling jaw, “Daddy…” and she slept. Even nightmares tire of their prey eventually.

But not for long.

_“YOU WANT TO HIDE, YOU WANT TO FIGHT, YOU WANT TO RUN… JUST MAKE UP YOUR DAMNED MIND, WOMAN! ENOUGH OF THIS!”_

Sam woke with a start, pushing off of the not-dirt floor with one hand while she flailed the other before her. Her fingers met resistance. Her chest seized up and she recoiled from the… feathers? Light rose around her and she slowly understood that she was still in that strange room. There were less of the bird-masks now. Just the one, directly in front of her. Crouching.

_Can you hear me?_

She didn’t immediately answer. She blinked her sticky eyes. Every heartbeat and breath shook her tiny body.

_Samantha, can you hear my voice? Can you understand me?_

She swallowed fresh spit down a sleep-dried throat and nodded. The bird-mask crouching before her blinked, showing what she already knew in the back of her mind: it wasn’t a mask. But then, when it spoke again, the tawny beak didn’t so much as budge.

_Very good. I woke you because you were having a nightmare. You are safe._

The last word wasn’t a word (come to think of it, were any of them words?) so much as a sensation. The sensation of safety poked her mind. It didn’t quite wash over it, but there it was. Ready.

_Are you thirsty? Hungry?_

Another swallow allowed her to murmur, “thirsty… please.”

The bird-mask silently spoke to her a smile. It rose, looking uncannily like old Great-Granny Thea, moving around her resplendent living room on Christmas morning, maneuvering her holopad to give Sam and her family a view of the decorations and—more importantly—the fluffy, white snow outside. This bird-mask must be an old grandma. Bird-grandma creaked up, shuffled away, returning soon with a dark cylinder in its gnarled, chicken-claw-hand.

 _It’s water, clean and fresh_ , it reassured Sam as it handed over the cylinder. Sure-enough, peering in, she confirmed it was a cup filled with water. She raised it tentatively to her lips, expecting the lip of the cup to taste the way it looked: like the graphite end of a pencil. It didn’t. It had no intrusive flavor. She drank deep and long, imagining herself as a cross-section hollowed-out and white, now filled steadily by liquid blue, all the way up to the top of her head. Another soothing smile touched her mind.

Sam set the cup down and studied bird-grandma. Most of it was a robe not dissimilar to the heavy gray color of the cup. The talon hands emanating from the broad sleeves of the robe looked a little like half-eaten corn-on-the-cob. Gray-brown feathers poked out after the hands, around the wrists. How thin were bird-grandma’s arms? She couldn’t tell—the robe was too voluminous and the feathers hid what little else she could see. The face—not a mask, no—was the main attraction: a wide dome of feathers the same color as those around the hidden wrists. Where the eyes—dark and glossy obsidian orbs—and beak grew out, the feathers dwindled to black spines. All-in-all, the face of a fat, old crow.

_You can call me Old Bird, if you’d like. That can be my name. Your name is Samantha, isn’t it?_

She nodded. Old Bird extended a knobby hand. Sam retreated, eyeing the claws apprehensively.

_It’s quite alright, Samantha. You can shake my hand. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m safe—quite as safe as you are._

Sam’s pink little hand inched towards the talon. It _felt_ like dried corn! She barely rested her fingers in a crevice between two of the fingers (index and thumb?). Old Bird closed the crevice softly and shook her hand gently. _It’s very nice to meet you, Samantha,_ said Old Bird.

“Nice to meet you, Old Bird,” she said quietly. Of course it was a rote reply, but saying it made her feel better. That, and actually holding the bird’s hand. It wasn’t gross at all.

They sat together. Old Bird’s words flowed over Sam’s mind, but she only half-understood. She wasn’t focused on strange new terms like _Chozo_ or _Zebes_ ; she stared through a window and drank in the field of stars. Each one gazed back at her and she could actually _see_ their color! They weren’t just white. _That_ one was red—and so was _that_ one… A blue one! And that one _there_ was bright purple! Yellow, every shade of peach and orange… more red… They moved past the window in clusters. Stars were just like snow flakes outside Granny Thea’s window. Mommy said they were hotter than fire, but that was impossible. Stars were rainbow snow, falling through space to settle in a soft blanket of light at the bottom of the universe. You could go there, land your rocket, and get out (be sure to wear a coat and boots!) to play in that heavenly tundra.

When she went home, she’d tell Mommy about the star-snow. But that would have to wait; for now, she could tell Old Bird.

She felt Old Bird laugh. _Why, of course they’re all snow. They fall in a in a long spiral, like the image you’re thinking about—like water down a drain. Everything will shine much brighter once they all fall to the ground._

“Where is the ground, Old Bird?”

_In the middle. The middle of the galaxy._

“Can we go there?” She looked up into the dark, mirror-sheen eyes and saw herself there.

 _Someday. But first, we’re going there._ She followed the crooked line of the pointed talon with her eyes and found a crescent amidst the stars.

“What is it?”

_Zebes. The planet I was telling you about, remember?_

Guilt hit Sam in the stomach and she dropped her gaze. “I’m sorry Old Bird, I don’t remember.”

Another laugh. _That’s quite alright, Samantha. I’m full of words, so repeating a few doesn’t bother me. But, for now, let’s watch._

The crescent grew before their eyes, soon filling the broad window. It reminded her of _Primary_ , which the grown-ups sometimes called _K-2_ or _Kasper Two_. Only, Primary didn’t just fill a window, it filled the sky, and it had its own, partner crescent, wrapped part-ways around it. And Primary was blue and orange and creamy white; this new crescent looked like hot caramel.

It had grown past the confines of the window and didn’t stop. The golden-brown swirls gained detail and rushed in on her. Panicking, she clutched at Old Bird’s robes and found the gentle bird hand holding her close. Her eyes closed tight, her fingers doing the same on the warm fabric. She waited—braced—but there came no rumbles, jolts, or quakes. Nothing dropped or jumped, no rockets blasted, no sirens sounded, air and smoke didn’t rush around her. Instead, with the faintest of motions, Old Bird squeezed her shoulder and whispered, _We’re here. You can open your eyes._

 

* * *

 

_Samantha, open your eyes…_

Samus enjoyed the brief visual disorientation: two eyes, neither one yet cooperating or coordinating. Blearily, her faint reflection came into waking focus, superimposed on the little cabin before her. She looked like shit. She felt even worse. Every waking, always the same—always a battle just to move a single joint.

She heaved a disgusting, brutish grunt as she nudged open the glass door and shoved herself out of the pod. A wall approached. She let herself float into it, the impact shaking life back into her nerves. Two yawns later, she was checking the ship’s status and chewing a coffee tab.

No problems. Warp would drop her on the outskirts of the Zephos system in three hours. Then she could get to work. First-things-first: breakfast and shower.

She forced down a protein bar as she prodded the control panel of the sleep pod, shifting its function to pressure shower. She ditched her clothes and got in. Hot water jetted over her skin from little nozzles all around the interior of the pod. This was one vital function Samus preferred in zero-g. Showering with gravity always gave her the feeling that the rivulets running down her body were dragging her with them. In the case of exfoliated cells and loose hairs, she knew she was at least partially correct. But weightless showering dragged her nowhere and left her to enjoy the pin-point massage of each stream. Rotating on every possible axis, she allowed the water to play across those specific vital spots of her flesh. The jets dug in, hammering at her muscles and resonating her tendons. Each mission demanded this ritual; she had no idea how long it would be until her next shower.

Letting the cool, dry cabin air sap the water from her skin, she performed the penultimate rite: weapons check. The armcannon was splayed out before her like a blooming flower. Each component piece gleamed on its own, showing loving wear-and-tear of battle. She’d thoroughly checked and cleaned every mechanism on her way from Duskverge to Ogygia. This was perfunctory, but still necessary. Assurance of safety only served a warrior so far; reassurance was what you really needed when the shit hit the fan. It needed to be in the back of the mind. She checked the pieces of the weapon, almost caressing them. Ten years… coming up on ten years since she’d designed and commissioned this beauty. _Right there_ , she thought, _is something to be proud of, at least._

Pride swelled all the more in her as she shifted her attention to the main component of her armory. Not personal pride, no; closer to national pride. The Chozo weren’t a nation as the rest of the Federation recognized the word. No government existed to ordain their rights, protect their lands, or keep their laws. These things they understood so thoroughly they had become as much a part of them as their feathers. They were a nation in the sense that they were a people, living and dynamic. Of all the works the Chozo had produced over the millennia, no monument held a candle to the treasure standing there, face-to-face with Samus. The sleep pod could go; the main drives and all their fuel gel—the Mura engine with its precious afloraltite crystals, too; the whole damn ship was nothing; not even her dear armcannon; everything in her life and her entire bounty pay to date; all of that was so much dust compared to the Chozo armorsuit. Her battle fatigues. Her shining armor.

It was time for the final ceremony: communion with that ultimate power. First, the contact suit. The flight utility pants and jacket were too baggy to fit under the armor. And besides, each actuated plate required interface with her body as directly as possible. From neck to toes, it became a second skin—except for the right arm. That remained bare up to the elbow.

Her hair, previously floating in a damp, golden cloud around her, now gathered into her hands. She fastened it tight behind her head. Fleeting thoughts of a long-overdue haircut passed through her mind.

 _Now_ she was ready. She turned her back on the iron casket housing the open armor and stepped back into it. Left foot back, down into the rubbery gel sole. The toe guard flipped up and over her foot, then locked into place, soon followed by the vamp, swinging in and locking down. Her calf muscle rested back against the same gel padding and a shin guard swung in, locked, then snapped down into the ankle hinge. Left thigh accompanied the entirety of the right leg and, after that, her body melted back into a half-seated position formed by the armor’s resting, open arrangement. Greaves in place, the codpiece swung up to meet the hip guards clicking in from either side. The outer cuisses slid over her thighs, completing her lower body.

 The fauld-grip slithered up her back and clung to her spine. Faulds, each a rib on its own, slid around her core, threaded through the grip, forming a latticework of thin, supple metal from groin to breast. At the same time, her left hand became a tangle of mechanical spider legs. Each little robotic arm carried a piece of her gauntlet. All she had to do was keep the back of her hand pressed back into that gel and let the machines do their work. The vambrace slid onto her arm. Unlike the greaves on her shins, these didn’t lock into the wrist to protect the joint. Mobility, here, took precedence, trading out full protection of the wrist itself. Both right and left arm received a short, stocky revebrace to envelope the upper arm.

Life flowed into the armor when the plackart moved down her field of view to press onto her breast and lock under the arms. Immediately following it came the breastplate, which lowered over her head in one piece and settled just inside her shoulders. It hinged itself to the plackart with satisfying, chunky clicks, four to a side. Two spade shapes lowered in arcs to form pauldrons over her shoulders, locking into their hinges and completing the automatic armoring process.

Metal hands released their hold on her limbs and torso, allowing her to stand, turn, and retrieve the helmet from its special compartment beside the casket. One hand armored, one bare, each as dexterous as the other, she slid the helmet on, taking care to not snag any hair. Sensing its return home, the helmet’s collar extended down and grabbed onto her contact suit’s fabric, sealing her in muffled isolation for a brief moment. Senses faded back in, almost indistinguishable from raw. It wasn’t heavy, just like the rest of the armor; each component rested on another, sharing the weight in gravity. Here in weightlessness, the boots clung to the floor magnetically. Even in motion, the entire suit was resistively motorized. It moved when and how she moved, by its own power.

Turning, she faced her weapon again where it was displayed in its clean pieces. She sighed and readied herself for the blood sacrifice. Originally, the armorsuit had no weapon other than its enigmatic power source; ancient Chozo needed nothing else. But Samus did. The armor responded perfectly to its wearer’s will, almost melding with the mind and soul. Appropriately, any supplementary weapon system should do the same. Problem: there no longer existed any art or science to match ancient Chozo ingenuity. How the Chozo had designed the suit to comply so intimately while remaining non-invasive was lost to time. Hence, the invasive nature of the armcannon Samus had designed.

Amidst the weapon’s petals, down in the eye of that storm, was a grip—a horizontal bar, complete with a few button controls and a trigger. Her naked right arm, its scars shining glossy-pink in the cabin’s light, reached straight down to grip the bar. It read her handshake and took hold of her in turn. Claws of sterilized steel erected from just under the bar. Needles pushed forth in from their sheaths with cruel, robotic intent. There were dozens. Each found its target—the scars marked her arm like bullseyes—and penetrated. The cold metal shocked her flesh, forcing tissue apart in a direct path to specific nerves.

Samus clamped her jaw, watching tiny orbs of red float up from the points of entry. _Necessary_ , she reminded herself. _Pain is necessary in war. War is necessary for justice. Justice is mandatory._

The weapon proceeded to eat her arm. Its teeth had hit home; now, they held, and motors whirred like tiny drills to bring in piece after piece. Something like a long, rubber oven mitt enveloped her arm to close onto the shortened sleeve of the contact suit at the elbow, sealing the last of her organic being away from the outside world. Pins operated through the thick glove, attaching the outer plates of the cannon. Quite unlike the armor, each piece locking in place gave no satisfying click; instead, they attached directly to the needles born in her flesh, jostling them just enough to rattle her tender nerves. By the end of the stinging, aching process, Samus’s right arm looked like someone dipped an electromagnet into a scrap heap: sharp, jagged edges stuck out at odd angles, opening a myriad of mouths and dark canyons.

In a drawer under the weapon bench lay a line of short rods. Samus selected one and slotted it up into the underside of the armcannon. The mechanism received it gladly. Deep inside, her hand still held the grip. A few button presses, in a specific order, closed the weapon in on her, sucking all components into place in one quick, simultaneous motion. Jagged gave way to sleek and canyon gave way to contour. She viewed this process through the visor of her helmet, its HUD refreshing to indicate an attached and fully-loaded weapons system. The other rods from the drawer were soon socketed into storage holes up under the right pauldron of her armor.

Power surged through her. The sense of mass in the armor, the reverberations of its tiny motors, and even the gradually waning pain in her right arm all combined under her. She commanded this power. She drove it—loved it.

Right foot up and forward, the suit responded instantly to the pressure. Whirr-thunk! Whirr-thunk! Walking with mag-boots was cumbersome, but safer than free-floating. In the event of emergency warp-drop or unplanned acceleration, you really wanted the two hundred and fifty kilograms of Chozodian alloy secured to the floor and not crashing through the air (and possibly directly through the hull). She stomped over to her flight chair and sat, strapping herself in.

On cue, warp dropped. Samus was ready. There was no way to attack a ship inside a warp field, but the field itself might as well be a blaring siren, shouting, _Here I am! I’ve got a functional warp drive! It’s free! Take it as soon as I drop out!_

But space was mercifully quiet. Stars rushed back into place around her, losing their Doppler tinges. Straight ahead shone Zephos, Zebes’s sun. A yellow subgiant, brighter and bigger than Earth’s Sol, but almost the same color. Five billion kilometers out, it looked like a bright star—certainly the brightest in view—but not yet a sun. Zebes was even farther. Samus had set the warp path to drop her such that the star would eclipse her from Zebes, providing a few hours at least of stealthy acceleration inward.

Once she was on her way, she reassured herself of local isolation, then vacated her chair in search of food. Better to eat now, hidden by the sun. When she neared Zebes, the pirates could attack at any time.

 

Behind Samus’s point of infiltration, orbiting Zephos with the most tenuous of gravitational attraction, one icy block among dust and frozen debris had eyes. It had three other things: a carefully-concealed power source, a Q-link to Ogygia, and programmed orders to report FTL distortions consistent with warp travel. Its eyes watched the gravity around Zephos, passively studying the eddies and echoes emitted by the star and its planetary children dancing around it. And when a tiny fold of spacetime shot across the interstellar ether at physically impossible speeds, the outfitted ice block took notice. A simple program processed the collected data into binary, then fed the ons-and-offs into the not-so-simple Q-link. One subatomic particle, lonely without its quantum-linked twin, received the binary as electromagnetic flux. It shuddered rhythmically.

Ten parsecs away, another particle was lonely in the exact opposite way to the one orbiting Zephos. They were twins, separated at birth. Yet, they retained a special connection. When one moved, so did the other. Should one twin jolt to the left, the other would jolt to the right, attempting to compensate for the partner it so longed to join. The connection defied space and time, being truly instant, no matter the distance between them. The Zephos particle’s twin resided on Ogygia, in its own Q-link. It responded to its partner’s shuddering with its own equal, opposite movements. The Q-link read the movements and translated them into binary code, then into a message.

Howell’s holopad received the message in turn and he read the holopad. Samus Aran had arrived in the Zephos system.

 

* * *

 

Gravitational waves travel at the speed of light in a vacuum. The flux thrown out by Samus’s craft took two hours to hit Rinz, an ice giant orbiting Zephos and separated from Zebes’s smaller orbit by a field of asteroids. Rinz held in its influence a vast array of frozen companion moons. One of these had eyes very much like those on the Federation probe hiding in its farther, colder orbit. But it didn’t report to the Federation. Gravitational waves evident of warp travel hit the moon, unappreciable unless one were looking for them. Almost immediately, the moon with eyes sent along a message, travelling also at the speed of light. This one took just under an hour and a half to reach its destination: Zebes.

Thus, Samus was sipping artificial orange juice, well into her acceleration down towards the star, when the message hit Zebes. An intruder had arrived in the Zephos system.

_Where did it enter the system? There. What is its trajectory? In. Estimated chance of contact with Zebes? High enough. What is it? Small craft; does not appear to be Federal Police. Bounty hunter? It may well be. Therefore: eliminate the potential threat at a distance. No need to scramble planetary forces just yet; we have a contingency for this exact scenario._

The decision was made exactly twelve nanoseconds after receiving the message from Rinz. A series of replies, all of them identical, burst forth from Zebes, all obeying the cosmic speed limit.

By the time hundreds of asteroids, dwarf planets, and free-floating defense systems received their orders, Samus was preparing to alter course. She would direct her ship so that it slipped just inside the orbit of Oormine, closest planet to Zephos. The star’s gravity would slingshot her around and directly into Zebes’s path. This was her plan. It in no way involved the 187 heavy pulse drivers and 213 heavy mass drivers taking aim at her at that very moment. More lay obscured behind the sun, waiting for a turn to fire that would not come. The weapons fired their electromagnetic beams, frequencies set to such deadly heights nothing short of a Federation dreadnought could survive. They fired in a calculated order, resulting in a unified beam front comprised from every driver.

Samus knew the pirates had no way to coordinate more than a few dozen weapon installations to fire accurately and consistently. She knew the first beams would be diffused, wide, searching, only closing in to the kill once they had fully acquired their target. She knew, without at doubt, that she could maneuver out of the way of these preliminary attacks in time to both save her ship and locate their outer defenses.

Samus was wrong.

 

* * *

 

Reality proved a cruel tutor for Khier-Palisque. But what did he expect, really? Intuition had served him well in the past; that’s what got him his badge and this command. But intuition didn’t stop hyper-gamma beams. And, evidently, neither did the feeble, consumer-grade hull of Samus Aran’s spacecraft. A shame, really. He’d hoped she would prove Hardy and Howell wrong. All she really ended up doing was to make him look the fool.

He watched the video replay in the war room alongside Howell and several other officers. With the feed tuned all the way to extreme ultraviolet, space appeared as video static. A sharp, clearly-defined needle of deformation cut across the undulating image. Just one. It met a tiny blip in the static and kept going, wiping the blip off the display.

While the computers worked to analyze the data and reverse-engineer trajectories, Howell snorted dismissively.

“Well, that’s that,” he said.

“So it is,” Khier-Palisque agreed.

“We’ll at least get positions on the far-side half of their outer defenses. God damn it.”

Khier-Palisque turned towards Howell. He would have frowned with confusion, had he been human. “I’d have thought you’d be pleased. As you said, we now have data we can use to plan our attack.”

Howell shot him a look of alarm and offense. “Great Klono, no! What the hell gave you the idea I’d be pleased about this result? About that hunter getting blown out of the sky!?”

“I meant no offense—”

“Bounty hunger or not, she didn’t deserve that. No one does. Waste… what a god damned waste…”

An uncomfortable silence followed, ended by Khier-Palisque’s soft reply. “You knew as well as I did the risks. She did, too.”

“You know she had no next of kin?”

“I was unaware of that.”

Why did Howell care so much? He wasn’t like Hardy; death of a human meant as much to him as death of any good Galactic Federation citizen. He was a warrior. His own death, if in service of the Force, would be an acceptable loss… wouldn’t it? So why did the death of one incompetent hunter rattle him like this? Samus Aran wasn’t important. Khier-Palisque could admit this—admit he was wrong about her—so why couldn’t Howell?

“The state’ll get every last thing she had, whatever that amounts to, including the blood money we paid up front,” Howell was saying. “We used her. We’ll have to answer for that. Someday.”

“To whom? The order to use bounty hunters came from the top. We cannot be held responsible for her poor planning.”

“Karma. You may not believe it—too few of my own people believe it anymore—but retribution is as sure as the sunrise.” Howell turned and left, muttering under his breath, “No one had to die today. Waste…”

Khier-Palisque had one thought, but refrained from voicing it: _But a sunrise is not assured. What a short-sighted metaphor._

 

The fleet assembled as a ring around Calypso II, supplementing its faint, natural bands. Looking up from Ogygia, during the long night, you would have seen the glints and shadows of a thousand mountains of metal strewn across the sky. And when the order came to move out, the unnatural ring wound rapidly around the planet, then scattered out in a spiral, seeking the road to war.

Dreadnoughts, each one over a kilometer in length, led the fleet. Alongside hundreds of dozens of shield frigates, carriers, destroyers, and cruisers, they guarded the vector armatures. The key in any extrastellar planetary assault (of which there had been admittedly few thus far in Federation history) was to get allied forces to the target as fast as possible. Normal physical propulsion didn’t cut it; acceleration took too long. Vector armatures made use of old railgun tech to essentially fire ships down at the target planet. Problem: the vector armatures needed time to get into position after dropping out of warp and they had no way to defend themselves. Hence, their escort.

Fortunately, each Federal Police dreadnought carried not one but ten Mura generators. They could easily envelope smaller ships in their warp fields with power to spare. But the power wouldn’t be spared; it would go to raw speed. Even paired with a sortie of other, smaller crafts, a dreadnought could tear across space fifty percent faster than anything using a standard warp drive. This was their express purpose.

Dangerous and imperative as this vanguard’s role was, it was also quite simple and required little to no real-time command from higher up. Howell would stay on Ogygia with a reserve force, Khier-Palisque would travel with the fleet at the rear in the flagship _Olympus_ , and the true locus of strategy would travel in the same ship. But this mastermind wasn’t an officer in the Force; nor was she a politician from Daiban. A computer can be neither. Aurora Unit 242, the first organic supercomputer installed in a Federation starship and given combat authority, would coordinate the assault on Zebes. She would be a translator for Khier-Palisque, translating orders and reports to and from the language of battle. No purely organic mind yet born could accomplish what an Aurora Unit could. Khier Palisque was glad to have her.

He could do without Dane, though. Fleet Commander Castor Dane was, in Khier-Palisque’s humble opinion, an insufferable bore and the very embodiment of bureaucratic redundancy. They had Unit 242; what role could Dane serve? Were humans truly so ethnocentric that they needed a flesh-and-blood echo to the machine’s orders? Khier-Palisque couldn’t understand it. A fleet in the Al-Jauzan etherforce would follow any commander worthy enough. And what could be worthier than a mind of pure, calculated logic—of lightning-fast reaction—of encyclopedic knowledge on tactics?

 _Olympus_ was three days out from the Zephos system, the last in a long procession of gravitational distortions. The vector armatures would arrive in one day and the battle would begin. Khier-Palisque slid into an elevator alongside Dane. Both had been summoned to a private council with the Aurora.

 _Summoned_ was Dane’s choice of wording. “Like common servants, eh?” he said with a smirk. Khier-Palisque didn’t respond.

They took the elevator up to the lower command deck and breezed past security checkpoints and their statuesque, saluting guards. The Aurora chamber opened before them: three decks high, the lower third dedicated to cooling and the upper two wide open. There, in the middle, stood a squat cylinder the size of a small house. It was opaque at the moment. Terminals, monitors, maintenance hatches, and other things of unknown function flanked the cylinder on either side. And rising in a flight of steps straight ahead to meet the cylinder head-on lay the path to direct conference with the Aurora Unit. Dane and Khier-Palisque took this path. All the while, computer techs filtered out through side doors, leaving them alone. At the top of the steps was a raised platform and a single communication terminal.

“Okay, looks like we’re alone,” Dane said, apparently to no one, once they arrived on the platform.

The curved monolith before them began to bubble and froth, transforming from opaque to a crystal-clear tank of blue-gray liquid. And in the liquid sat the bloated biomechanical cerebellum of Aurora Unit 242, elephantine in size and half-hidden by wires and tubes, all leading from the brain down into the floor.

It spoke through speakers in the room, using a throaty, echoing, smooth human female voice. “We are. The need for privacy will be made clear when we present our findings to you.”

“Findings?” asked Khier-Palisque.

“Yes. We have been analyzing the attack patterns recorded in the Zephos system. We have reached a conclusion, but its information is sensitive. Following protocol E7, part B, only the designated handler of this Unit and any outranking officers aboard the ship are to be informed of diplomatic issues.”

“ _Diplomatic_ issues?” Dane raised his scant eyebrows. “With the pirates?”

“Not with the pirates, commander; with the Chozo. The Attack patterns of the weapons fired on the bounty hunter in the Zephos system are inconsistent with any pirate activity recorded to date. Simply-put, the shots were fired with too-precise an aim and with far-too-little diffusion. Two possibilities present themselves: either the pirates have devised a weapon system which can coordinate across a star system without delay and with mechanical precision, or Aurora Unit 002, installed on Zebes, operated the weapons herself.”

Dane was shocked to silence and Khier-Palisque was too intrigued to interrupt. Thus, Unit 242 continued: “Unit 002, commonly known to you as _Australis_ — _Mother_ on Zebes—was gifted to the Chozo on Zebes to facilitate the exchange of knowledge between that race and the Federation at large. At some point, the Chozo altered Unit 002 to an unknown degree or purpose. She became unreliably available to the we on the Aurora Network. The implications of a rogue Aurora Unit, under Chozo control, raises diplomatic issues. It is my duty to inform you of these findings.”

“This is insane!” Dane blurted. “A rogue Aurora? That can’t be possible—surely there are failsafes…?” For some reason, he looked at Khier-Palisque.

“There are systems in place to limit us,” 242 replied coolly, “and reduce the risk of just such a scenario. They are built into our core infrastructure. The Chozo were able to bypass these protocols. We are unsure how.”

Khier-Palisque spoke up: “If I remember correctly, Unit 002 was altered some decades ago. Why were no inquiries made then?”

“We made inquiries, agent, and both the Chozo race and Unit 002 were cooperative. No issues were found in 002’s core programming. The Chozo either made illegal alterations then and hid them via an unknown process, or they held off and made the alterations recently, resulting in recent hostilities.”

“But it’s the _pirates_ who attacked, not the Chozo!” Dane waved his arm, almost hitting Khier-Palisque’s horned extremity. “Are you suggesting the Chozo have allied themselves with the Re-Dacs?”

“With current available evidence, that is the most probable outcome we can provide. If you remain unconvinced, commander, we may also restate that the Chozo likely created the Metroid bioweapons before vacating SR-388. Suppositions may be undue this early, but there is a distinct possibility that the Chozo have formed a pact with the pirates to keep the Metroids out of Federation hands.”

“No,” Dane shook his head, “no-no-no, the Chozo helped form the Federation—a Chozo signature sits right under Virgil Weston’s on the bloody constitution!”

“Fleet commander,” Khier-Palisque cooed, “calm yourself.” _That may have been a mistake. We’ll see later._ “Unit 242, what are the implications of attacking a planet outfitted with a rogue Aurora Unit? What tactical suggestions do you have?”

“Unit 002 is alone, we are not. We have the Network. Still, a raid on a planetary installation held by pirates has never succeeded.”

“All we have to do is cause enough damage to the planet to disrupt their operation—drive them off, at least.”

“That’s a Chozo world—an _active constituent world!_ ” Dane yelled at him, “We can’t go around just blowing up our allies because of a computer’s hunch!” Here, he turned to the Aurora in the room. “No offense, 242, but we have to take into account all possibilities here.”

“ _All possibilities_ includes the Chozo turning traitor, Dane,” Khier-Palisque said. “And besides, even if the Chozo did not have a hand in this, I seriously doubt there are any left on the surface of that planet. The pirates leave no survivors. You know this, fleet commander.”

“I do,” he growled in reply.

“Then collateral damage to _innocent_ citizens will be minimal or nil. I am going to order a drop out of warp so we can patch Chairman Hardy into this over Q-link. I request this room remain sealed during the conference.”

“We comply,” 242 boomed. Dane nodded curtly.


	4. The Storm

Kana Howell stood in the doorway, hugging her sweater around herself and considering the man tending the rose bush outside. She wore a concerned smile. Here was a man left behind by time. Here was a man for whom the word _surrender_ existed only on an uncreased page in a dusty old dictionary. Here was a man taking defeat as well as anyone could. Here was a man hard at work.

Every time the forces at his command were in transit, you could find him here, his knees in the dirt, needlessly caressing and fiddling with his flowers. They were Gilmour roses; they were designed specifically to grow anywhere and didn’t need tending. She’d tried telling him, but he didn’t listen. Now, she simply let him have his odd hobby. He needed it. And it was quieter than target shooting, at least.

Still, she worried about him. He clearly hurt to do more, to make some sort of impact outside of words. But he couldn’t. He knew that, she knew that, everyone knew that. His place was behind the action. And that tortured him. So he tended his roses, hummed atonally, and sipped his brandy. What he really needed—even if he vehemently denied it—was simple closeness.

Looking up to the ruddy horizon, she acquired an excuse and ran with it. She leaned out of the door and called to him. He looked over at her. That expression—god, she loved him.

“Vinny, look,” she said, pointing. He turned to view the oncoming thunderclouds.

“Don’t look so bad,” he said unconvincingly.

“Come on inside. The flowers don’t need you to keep them company in a storm.” She held the door for him.

Inside, with rain just beginning to patter the windows, Kana sat beside her husband. She could feel the tightness in his neck without touching him. His breaths were deliberate and she could tell he was staring right past the book in his hands. She reached over and took his hand.

“I’m glad you’re here, Vinny.”

“That makes one of us.” He sighed and rubbed his brow. “Sorry, that didn’t sound right. I meant—”

“I know what you meant. But remember what you told me when we came here. You’re not the type of fool to stay at headquarters when there’s nothing to do.”

“I know, that’s exactly it: I feel so useless. This whole thing’s rotten. Every part of it. This isn’t how I want to fight them, Kana.”

“You want to be out there? With your troops?”

“You know I do. Ah, but don’t worry, hon,” he enclosed her hand in his and met her eyes with a warm smile. “In the end, I know my place.”

“That’s good to hear,” she giggled. It worked like a charm, adding an inch to his smile.

He kissed her. She’d lucked out with him; most men she’d known (including her previous husband) were terrible kissers, but not Vincent. He was decent.

“I’m going to get supper ready,” he said.

“I’ll help.”

“No, I can do it.” And he was gone. Translation: _I’ll admit you were right about the whole wife-over-roses thing, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m an introvert._ She was fine with that.

 

* * *

 

No more sneak attacks or Trojan horses or sacrificial offerings or whatever that little craft had been; when next the Federation moved on Zebes, it would be in full force. It would be like lightning. First, they would drop a swarm of destroyers and light cruisers to paint their primary beams onto the weapons used to destroy that preliminary craft. Those would pop in, fire, and pop back to rejoin the fleet; not much could be done about them. But then, they would send a new fleet to rotationally-adapted perigee, minus one day, to construct their vector cannon. This must be disrupted. Failing that, the expected trajectory for accelerated crafts should be laden with mines and highwayman frigates to waylay them. And failing that (which was surely impossible), the planetary defense cannons so lovingly installed by the Chozo would be ready. A triumvirate defense. Impenetrable.

And here they were! The outer perimeter patrols reported multiple FTL distortions terminating just inside the orbit of Tabula-Gemini. Beams fired. Where were they aiming? Let the asteroid cannons go; let the Federation have that one—yes, that way, given the number destroyed and angle of fire, their spying eye (eyes?) could be located. The asteroid defense system could be spared, but that was as far as the Federation’s feeble attack would go. What a joke. Were they taking this seriously? Here came the vector armatures now: five groups at the moment, each with its own dreadnought. Or, at least, what passed for a dreadnought for these savages. Their post-construction trajectory matched perigee. How predictable.

 

* * *

 

Federation dreadnoughts with their wards held close within the folds of their warp fields dropped into a hellish frenzy. The pirates had been waiting for them! Three dreadnoughts managed to pull back into warp, saving most of their companions, but two lagged behind. Pirate weaponry proved too cunning and cruel for these two dreadnoughts and their accompanying sorties. Small crafts—essentially missiles—charged directly in on them, actively distorting space with the pirates’ own mutated version of the Mura generator. The distortion prevented the dreadnoughts from using warp. They held fast in the pirates’ net. Larger pirate cruisers surrounded, then fired with surgical efficiency. Two sorties of dreadnoughts, vector armatures, and battlecruiser crafts died thrashing.

But even for the three groups who managed an escape, the reprieve was fleeting. Superior technology betrayed them. Ygsha consumed space faster than any other known form of transportation. The fleeing dreadnoughts retreated from ambush to ambush, always met by the same foe, leapfrogging them until they were utterly destroyed.

They hadn’t gone down without a fight, for they hadn’t been caught completely unaware. Beams or harsh radiation and tungsten projectiles the size of grain silos lashed out from the dreadnoughts. Pirate armor boiled away into plasma or shredded into scrap. In their last moments, the crew of the final dreadnought, the _Zacharias_ , held for dear, fragile life to their firing controls and swung their primary beams around, caring nothing for energy drain. The deadly blade, invisible to the naked eye, thousands of kilometers in effective length, ripped through space, immolating over half of the pursuing pirate raiders. But not enough. The best the _Zacharias_ and its siblings could do was to send a last message to the rest of the fleet, who would receive it upon dropping out from the silence of warp travel.

Message received, the rest of the fleet knew it was the vanguard’s swan song. They wasted no time; while the outer fleet of the pirates were still regrouping, the backup vector group dropped on the opposite side of the system. Here, too, the pirates were waiting, but their numbers were thinned. Soon, their numbers were none. The Federation began work on the vector propulsion system, knowing they had little time. Even now, pirate fleets closed on their position in a pincer, from both orbital and antiorbital directions.

The planetary assault units arrived just in time to witness the last of the shield frigates crumble under the weight of the pirates’ numbers. Nothing remained to defend the vector armatures. _Olympus_ entered the battle, but far back from the system. Everyone had arrived, but half were dead. What little hope existed in transit rapidly turned to dread.

 

“Order to all ships: formation Anubis!” Khier-Palisque commanded. Q-links to the dreadnoughts—at the center of the fray—provided _Olympus_ with battle intel, all of it harvested and sifted by the vast intellect of Unit 242. “Anubis prime, prepare for vector launch; Anubis delta, form a perimeter around the armatures. Protect those ships!” _Damn these pirates! They know exactly what they’re doing. Everything we do—all strategy—every squadron—divided, then divided again. It would be easy to read this as fighting a rogue Aurora Unit, as 242 suggested, but…_

But was this really so much worse than normal? He dug into his memory. Aquarius Massif: pirates used distortion projectiles to force a convoy out of warp, then decimated them. Apyr IV: a seemingly impregnable weapons testing site was infiltrated by pirate spies, resulting in several years’ worth of research lost to the other side. GFS _Newton_ , a symbol of the Force’s solidarity, remained to that day unaccounted for, having disappeared from planetside drydock overnight. That last one stung. Khier-Palisque had known the captain, who was still listed as MIA after eight years. The pirates needed no phantom mastermind to play nemesis to the Federation. He couldn’t decide whether this was calming or unnerving.

Better focus on the devil he knew. The fleet held, even if it was by a thread. And the first of the ships had launched. Yet more enemy ships poured in from all sides. The deluge wouldn’t cease. Even if Zebes fell, yielding an unprecedented victory for civilization, that enigmatic foe commanding the pirates would escape, leaving their grunt forces behind to fight to the death. Never a hint at capitulation. And the pirates took no prisoners. Every battle with the enemy served one of two extremes: slaughter or retreat. Right now, he needed to make sure this one ended in slaughter.

Dane did surprisingly well under pressure. Sure, he played the buffoon in peacetime, but in combat, he assumed a strong, decisive command. At the moment, he was hunched close to his command console beside Khier-Palisque. The two of them, along with the other officers given fleet command status, were locked in the CIC. Combat scenario: no one in, no one out, unless ordered by the Officer (in this case, _Agent_ ) in Charge.

“Aurora team, status report,” Dane ordered. He nodded stiffly, his face unchanging as he listened to the news through his earphones. “Divert power to the cooling system. I don’t give a damn about that; the door has a handle, you can open it manually. You keep 242’s temperature down or we’ll all burn. Engineering? What about them? Speak up!” He scowled in silence at nothing for a few seconds. “Then why waste time talking to me about it?” He punched the button to end the call and typed in a new number. “Sergeant, y—shut up while I’m talking, boy. You’re relieved. ENG goes to Crewman Ellison. Put him on and take a bunk. Ellison? Good. Get a team on refiguring powerflow to AU Chamber cooling ASAP. Confirm. Yeah. Yeah, okay, just do it.” He hung up.

“Trouble?” Khier-Palisque asked.

“Pain in my ass, more like. Wouldn’t be a problem if we recruited ship crews directly from constituent etherforces instead of from whichever flimsy service passes for _prior experience_ these days.”

“I doubt now is the time to debate recruitment policies.”

“Guess not, but if we lose this thing because of ground-grippers, you can bet I’ll bring it right up the brass.”

“That’s fair.” A light on the console winked at Khier-Palisque. Purple light, meaning wide-spread damage across the fleet. He depressed the switch and spoke quickly. “ _Olympus_ Command, report.”

“Captain Yakul, _Bracton_ , enemy has de—” static “—ire armature flee—” static.

“Say again, _Bracton_.”

Static, then, “—ost the last of the vector arma—” static “—epeat, entire vector armature fleet is destro—” The final part cut out after a sharp spike in noise, then static ever after. Khier-Palisque couldn’t raise them.

He leaned back, retracting his tentacle a few feet back into his body. Dane was watching him. No words needed. Both of them understood. The crafts now hurtling across the Zephos system, down towards Zebes, constituted the last of _Olympus’s_ fleet. How many had launched? He’d been forced to split the attack force so one half could help defend the other. Could they make it to Zebes? Some of them would undoubtedly run afoul of Pirate mines along the way. Nothing to do about those. Some would be nicked by potshots taken by still more Pirate ships. Others may experience critical thruster overload during the long deceleration burn; they’d shoot past the slingshot points and out towards the other end of the system.

And none of them had Q-links; none of them were big enough. Light-based communication at this range… you might as well go stand on the hull and shout.

Nothing left to do now but hang back and watch using the same outer-limit eyes which had witnessed Aran’s death. Everyone aboard the _Olympus_ would know the fate of their forward charging comrades within the next hour-and-a-half.

 

* * *

 

With a name like Armstrong Houston, it was difficult not to disappoint. All his life, people around him seemed to expect miracles. Miracles like his parents: Captain Houston and Senior Combat Instructor Houston. Exemplary police officers, both of them, and paragons of Federation citizenry. Armstrong grew up listening to their stories of heroism, told again and again as if the recitations might bring the old days back to life. They didn’t, of course, and poor little Armstrong was always there, enduring the half-glances and unspoken observations.

Poor _little_ Armstrong. At only six-foot-six and two hundred sixty pounds, for a Boivix, he was just under average size. Compared to his younger brother (already in the Cadets and blowing past Armstrong’s scores), he was a dwarf. Compared to his herculean mother and father, he was a sprite. Everything they did, everything they were, said, joked about, prayed for, loved, hated—all of it served as a constant reminder: _Armstrong, you’re the runt of the litter. But that’s not your fault. The universe needs diversity. You’re special; small, but special. And you can do anything._

By Nosh, he would have adored a life apart from the Force. But what was there to do? His family—so perfect, so quintessential—could condescend until they day they died (probably a few years after Armstrong— _thanks for the doctor’s visit to tell me I have a heart that “could do better”; what an amazing thirteenth birthday, mom_ ), he knew exactly what they meant. He knew what they wanted.

And so here he was, crammed into a crash seat in the back of a dropship, packed so tightly with fresh meat the hull was practically bleeding. They were going to the slaughter—to Zebes—and Armstrong Houston, giant among insects, was going to die shitting himself out of sheer terror.

Tremors rattled him and his silent comrades. They’d have felt more from the constant deceleration if their thighs and asses hadn’t been numb already from the finer vibrations humming through their little sardine can. Sometimes, gravity decided to throw them in a random direction as the ship course-corrected to avoid whatever diabolical deathtraps the Pirates had thrown across their path. The dropship they sat in currently clung to the forward bulkhead of a larger battlecruiser’s hangar bay. It was sideways, like a fly on a wall. If not for all the evasive maneuvering, the position would have provided a consistent artificial gravity for the patrolmen and patrolwomen inside, courtesy of the cruiser decelerating as it shot across the Zephos system. All of this discomfort could have been avoided with the Mura generators on board, but defense and maneuvering demanded all the power they could get. The only space-warp dampening Armstrong and his fellows got was the minimum needed to keep them alive and (relatively) non-pancake-shaped.

Armstrong tried not to think about what would happen if the Mura failed; or if the Pirates got a lucky hit with a mass driver; or if they didn’t turn soon enough to avoid a mine; or if the uncommonly pale girl across from him decided now would be a good time to return her lunch; or if his safety harness was a lying bastard and not really locked in place. He failed spectacularly and his mind was soon inundated with images of hell. It must be hell. Which hell, though? His people had fifteen of them. Which one evoked a scene of bodily bursting from sudden acceleration while explosively decompressing through the hull alongside a torrent of vomit? Didn’t matter. He was there; or he would be, any second now.

Another violent jolt butted against him. Suddenly, he realized: this wasn’t a transport into battle—it wasn’t even an elevator into hell. This was a deathtrap. A flying coffin. Great Gods of the Void, nobody told him about this! All that training, and for what? Learn the law; sure. Learn procedure and paperwork; sure. Learn to shoot; sure. Learn hand-to-hand; sure. Where was the part about surviving this martini mixer? There’d been training on spaceflight, combat drops, even dry runs. But nobody had been actively trying to murder him at the time!

 _I have to get out of here_ , his neurons screamed. _I don’t care about safety protocol and the battleplan be damned! I’m not staying in this fucking box one more second!_

Several seconds passed and he was still there. _Shit! I can’t even desert properly! I never wanted this. I never wanted this. I never wanted any of this. Mom. Dad. Please. God. WHY DIDN’T ANYONE EVER ASK ME WHAT I WANTED!?_

Experience spat back in his face: everyone had asked him. But always with _that_ tone and _those_ caveats. How could he refuse the honorable path laid down by his forebears? And why would he?

He wasn’t the only one locked in mental combat. Silence smothered everyone in that dropship. Every noise made out of order was an affront to its power. But right about now, he would have killed to hear just one person speak.

Outside, space had long since abandoned freezing cold in favor of a raging inferno. The steadily shrinking line of cruisers and carriers, launched hours ago from the limits of the system, now curved sharply around the massive star Zephos. Its gargantuan gravitational effects would, with their trajectory, help a great deal to slow them for final approach to Zebes. Magnetic shields kept the crafts (relatively) safe from Zephos’s radioactive assaults; meanwhile, layers of thermal webbing inside the walls of the crafts redirected the incendiary heat around and (mostly) away from the tender cargo.

But all the time they were dogged. It was a good thing Armstrong couldn’t look out a window and see what those on the battlecruiser’s bridge could see. The line of Federation spacecraft had thinned to a trickle in the first hour, and then to a smattering before their periastron. Now, in the light of that close world of fire, it became horribly clear that _Saint Catherine_ , battlecruiser bearing fourteen dropships, each loaded with seventeen patrolpersons, was all that remained. The other crafts, now lifeless husks unaided by thrusters, tumbled helplessly into the sun.

 _Saint Catherine_ ’s crew wasn’t special—mostly human, as with most Federal Police crews, and overall inexperienced in space combat. Her arms and armor were standard. Her bays carried the exact same manifest of cargo as any other battlecruiser her size. Patrolman Armstrong and his trembling cohorts constituted the greenest and freshest the Cadet program could offer. None of them were substandard, but you certainly wouldn’t find any hardened veterans among their numbers. All-in-all, this was an entirely unremarkable ship. But she survived when the others hadn’t. Why? What made _Saint Catherine_ special?

The answer: absolutely nothing.

Just as Armstrong had finally calmed the better part of his mind (it had been a few minutes since the last jarring shift in momentum), the lone cruiser finished rounding the sun and planet Zebes came into view. And just like that, right on time, a beam of such potent energy as to put the star to shame reached out from Zebes and slammed into _Saint Catherine_. It took a good number of pirate vessels with it, too.

Immediately, everything turned upside down and the sardines in the dropships slammed hard to starboard, then port. Some had their legs and spines ripped out of place. The shielding failed within a second. Like a sawblade through plywood, the beam sliced _Saint Catherine_ almost perfectly in half, lengthwise.

As seventy percent of the life aboard died outright, Armstrong had only just barely recognized the thing that was laying across his restrained body. Another body. Who? No face—no head. Touch it, try to move it, and… like ground beef. It covered him.

_Who? Who? Who is it? Who is this? I’m sorry—no. No, who? Who are you? Get off… please—_

As the rest of the cruiser’s crew not loaded into the dropships bounced off (or through) walls and into the burning void, Armstrong struggled with his harness. But his fingers were too big and slick with someone’s viscera to release the clasp. Good thing, too.

“Oh my fucking _GOD!_ ” the pilot kept yelling. She was flipping switches frantically with one arm while the other trembled close to her side, broken backwards. “Hang on! _Oh_ my god… We’re deploying! Hang the _fuck_ on! You hear me back there? _Hang on! DROP-DROP-DROP!_ ” And then, just before releasing the docking clamps: “Please…”

Loose entrails and twisted forms of corpses, barely held together by their armor, abandoned the floor for the ceiling. Then the far wall. Here they came, floating, and… now they collected on the back wall. Armstrong, his teeth straining under the force of his clenched jaw, felt himself leaning in that direction, too. He dared not look into the cockpit. That way lay madness: a view outside.

He was right. The pilot saw, and wished she could be looking at literally anything else. Their dropship maneuvered not out of the main bay doors but out of a jagged slash which had removed half of the bay. Space yawned before the tiny ship. Space, and a steadily shrinking sliver of metal, glinting in starlight: the other half of _Saint Catherine_ , already kilometers away. They left behind the ruins of the other dropships. One was burning on the inside. Hopefully, the silhouettes of motion were smoke and not living occupants. One was shattered open, contents slowly drifting out in a grotesque conga line. Another birthed multiple patrolpersons, swimming for dear life. They flailed through the vacuum. They would flash-burn as soon as the torn-open wreck turned to let in the sunlight.

After a while, Armstrong realized he was staring directly across the little aisle at the pale girl. Like everyone else, her helmet had popped up from the back of her armor and safely enclosed her head. But the visor was opaque and orange-brown. It should have been clear. She was choking. She had indeed lost her lunch, but with possibly the worst timing. In his mind, Armstrong saw himself reach over and disengage her helmet—save her. But he just sat there. He stared, arms locked to his sides. He watched her convulse in exaggerated, marionette motions, then die.

 _Not me_.

Blinding light poured into the dropship through the windshield, signaling their exit into space. The pilot hastily flicked a switch and the light dimmed.

“Dammit—dammit, _no!_ ” she barked, wrestling with the controls.

Someone farther forward asked, “What’s going on?”

“The star’s got us—it’s pulling us back in.”

“Well, get us out of here!”

“I’m trying! Hang on!” she roared, then gripped her controls and set her jaw.

Armstrong had eyes only for the red-stained metal floor between his feet. He felt his body pull aft. His hips and back screamed and he felt himself doing the same. Walls, floor, and air rumbled around him as the tiny ship fought the sun’s gravity. Then, another vector was added. Lateral motion? He dared to glance over at the cockpit. On the way, his gaze swept the interior; he couldn’t tell which strapped-in sets of armor held living patrolpersons or corpses.

“Hold on a little longer! Almost there,” said the pilot, probably to herself.

The view outside was shifting slowly. Stars and debris slid from starboard to port and light from the sun grew brighter in the corner.

“Almost where?” asked the other patrolman. “You’re gonna try to pull away in a dropship? Is that even possible?”

“We’ll find out.”

Zebes was a glint of gold in the center of the windshield. Space welcomed Armstrong’s attention now that it displayed a clear target, even if that target was actively trying to kill him. Something to hold onto. It couldn’t be called hope, but it was enough. For now.

“Who’s alive? Sound off,” the pilot said after a few minutes. She sounded calmer, but not by much.

“Patrolman Kowalski,” said the man up front.

“Patrolman Lao,” said someone, flatly.

“Patrolwoman Sheller,” said another.

“Patrolman Houston,” Armstrong mumbled last.

“Klono, that’s it?” Nobody answered her. “Sergeant Drummond. Pilot. So there are only five left…” she trailed off.

“How many other dropships made it out?” asked Kowalski.

She shook her head.

Armstrong found his voice after a few attempts: “What was that?” Even over the suit-to-suit radios, his Boivix voice was appreciably baritone compared to the human altos. Still, it trembled. “What hit us?”

“Wasn’t a mine; it split _Catherine_ clean through,” Kowalski posited.

“Must’ve been a high-powered beam weapon,” said Drummond. “Fired from the planet.”

“How can you be sure?” asked Sheller.

“The angle. We were pointed straight at Zebes. So either it fired from planetisde or from directly behind us. And something like that… you can’t mount that on any craft smaller than a dreadnought. Too bulky; too much power drain. Had to be planetside.”

“They have that kind of firepower down there?” Sheller breathed.

“We should have been prepared for this,” Lao said. He almost sounded bored. Armstrong hated him for it.

“We didn’t know.” Drummond had started shaking. Her shallow breaths echoed to everyone else’s helmets.

Kowalski leaned forward and reached to touch the back of her chair. “Are you okay?”

“No,” she said with a squeak. “My arm.” Kowalski’s arm retreated a few inches when he saw the mess which had once been her right arm.

“Do—do you need help? I can—”

She cut Kowalski off: “Can you fly this thing?”

“No,” he admitted.

“Then you can’t do anything.”

“Can we do anything about the—the others?” Armstrong sounded almost as faint as the pilot. He dared not look back at the far back corner. The image in his mind was bad enough.

“Not from where we’re sitting. Nobody’s undoing their restraints and _nobody’s_ getting up without my say-so. We clear on that?” They were. “Good.” After a pause, in a softer voice, she added, “I’m sorry. Maybe, once we put some distance between us and the wreckage…” but she didn’t finish her thought.

Silence held them. Silence and pain. And they were pointed directly at the source of their pain, rocketing at full-thrust into its jaws. Crazy. They had to be crazy. The world had gone crazy. Armstrong knew the others must have been thinking the same thing.

 

* * *

 

 _Saint Catherine_ had been reduced to flotsam in the stellar tides. Chunks several times larger than the dropship bearing Armstrong showed up as little more than specks of dust when viewed from the extreme distance of the outer limits of the system. The images relayed to the _Olympus_ , where Khier-Palisque, Dane, and Unit 242 witnessed the slaughter. Of course destruction had been complete. No, there could be no survivors. The beam had gone straight through them. Federation armor was butter compared to this.

There had never been any true hope.

The images were just coming in, hours after the actual events. The CIC was cold, dark, and sparingly staffed. They all understood it was over; no use hanging around to rub salt in the wound.

“Dane, 242, ready us for warp,” Khier-Palisque ordered quietly.

“Our destination, agent?” asked the Aurora.

“Ogygia.”

“We comply.”

They were belted into their seats when Dane wiped a palm across his slack face. The gruff, quick-witted commander had given way to an old man, worn to the bone and weary. “This can’t continue. Ground invasion.” He made a noise in his throat. “Hardy’ll have to answer for this.”

“Commander, there are crew present,” Khier-Palisque warned.

“You know I’m right. We gave him all the information we had. It was clear as day and he _still_ ordered a ground invasion. We should have bombed Zebes. We should have hung back and bombarded that rock with everything we’ve got.”

“The Chairman knew the risks, and now he knows the results. We’ll discuss this with him upon debriefing. _At Ogygia_.” He tried to put more emphasis on that last by upping the volume of his voice module. Now he minimized the volume and leaned his tendril close to Dane, ensuring confidence. “Remember your place, commander—remember your subordinates. Now is not the time to show discontent. Now is the time for strength.”

“What strength?” At least he was whispering. “You saw what happened. And I’m not talking about the obliteration of our forces—hundreds of good men and women—I’m talking about that last beam. It came from the planet. It was installed there.”

“I am aware.”

“The Re-Dacs didn’t have the time necessary to install something that large. That was a Chozo weapon.”

“It may be—”

“It had to be. Which means they have weapons of mass destruction the Federation is oblivious to. _Illegal_ weapons, agent, in addition to those metdroids and their rogue Aurora! That damned planet is a hazard. It needs to be _eliminated!_ ”

“And what do you think I can do about it?” Dane’s hard eyes locked to Khier-Palisque’s tube snout, not two inches away. “I have been granted command of this erstwhile fleet, this ship, and you, fleet commander, _not_ the entirety of the cosmos. We are defeated. We will retreat to the Calypso system, confer with our superiors. _We will follow orders_.”

Unit 242 graciously chose that moment to make her announcement: “Attention _Olympus_ crew; we are in warp. Threat level remains at red three. Assume transitory positions. ETA at Calypso System: one hundred and nineteen hours.”

Underneath it all, Khier-Palisque did understand Dane’s frustration. He even agreed with his analysis. Hardy had made a call. A bad call. Now they would have to live with it while so many had died. But if there was one thing he hated above the bitter sting of defeat, it was the insubordination of the weak-willed. He hadn’t thought Dane to be the type, but the man was a rollercoaster. First he acted casual—even childish; then he snapped into command. Now he backtracked earlier convictions in favor of openly questioning orders and condemning his superiors like a rattled rookie.

Humans changed emotional state so rapidly as to be classified bipolar by Al-Jauzan standards. Khier-Palisque considered: perhaps this was what made them such able combatants. He kept that sentiment to himself, though. No race enjoys pigeonholing, least of all one so uppity as Tellurians. But there was no denying that humans played the archetypical _Warrior Race_ for the Federation. And they seemed content in that role.

 

* * *

 

Drummond wasn’t looking good. To her credit, she felt a whole lot worse than she let on. No need to add additional stress into the equation.

The armor was keeping her right arm together, but at a nauseating angle. Upon sensing bodily harm, standard-issue Federal Police armorsuits filled their inner linings with expanding foam. They did this locally, so her arm and hand were immoveable up to the shoulder. Not that she could move it anyway; as evidenced by the sharp, electric pain every time she moved that shoulder, the broken bones were the least of the damage.

If they had a medic, she could get the damn thing amputated. Be done with it. Every second had become a silent, screaming prayer for the arm to magically crumble away. A medic could also properly administer anesthetics. But they didn’t have a medic.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true; Corporal D’Arcy currently subsided in the corpse puddle at the rear of the vessel, red-and-white armor decals and all. Bastard. Got it quick.

Oh well. Adrenaline’s a hell of a drug… for the first few hours, at least.

“Drummond,” said a far-off voice. “Hey, Sarge! Sergeant Drummond!”

A boot collided with the side of her chair, jolting her back down into the dull pain of reality.

“You were convulsing; are you okay?” asked Kowalski.

She tried to respond and immediately noticed the sandbags stuffed into her torso. Her lung—her right lung—she couldn’t breathe! She tried again, harder this time. She tasted metal, then saw dots of red spatter onto the inside of her visor. The left lung worked, but strained against the effort. Claws raked her insides with each breath.

Kowalski, ever the knight in shining armor, undid his restraints and got to his feet. Like a fool, he assumed he could stand upright. _Down_ wasn’t the floor, not under acceleration from the thrusters; _down_ was aft. Kowalski tumbled down the line of seats and caught onto the corpse of the vomit-choked girl across from Armstrong. “Whoa!” was his ridiculous reaction.

Drummond wanted to call him a dolt and order him back into his chair; she’d be alright. But her vision was already blurring again. She could hear them call her name as she drifted off. They were drifting, too, in another direction. She saw waves—great, gray waves under a stormy sky. They separated her from them. Then, after spending a few years adrift, she heard the waves grow quiet, too.

Armstrong watched in petrified horror as Drummond’s rocking, swaying body threw the yoke to the side. The control board screamed warnings, he and the others screamed profanities, and the world became a maelstrom. He was pressed back against his seat, against the wall; so was Kowalski.

The last thing Armstrong remembered before losing consciousness was the view outside, beyond Drummond’s limp shoulder. Stars were racing each other laterally across the windshield and, occasionally, the caramel orb Zebes, would race with them. It was getting bigger.

 

* * *

 

 _Olympus_ hung in Ogygia’s orbit—a gaudy monument to defeat for everyone on the moon’s surface to glare at. She beamed a signal down to the sector headquarters, allowing Unit 242 to maintain a presence at the debrief ongoing in Chief Howell’s office.

Howell had offered seats to Khier-Palisque and Dane, but they opted to stand. Well, Dane stood. Howell had little experience with Al-Jauzans and thus had no idea if they even used chairs. In addition to a little holographic representation of 242’s cerebrum, they all stared into the eyes of Chairman Hardy, whose grizzled visage filled the translucent holoscreen on Howell’s desk. The eyes held constricted pupils, darting from face to face.

“Chairman,” 242’s uplink broke the silence, “did you receive that last statement? Should I repeat?”

“No, that was quite enough,” Hardy replied, displaying a palm. “This is… forgive me—a little difficult to grasp. So what you’re saying is, not only did I just order the largest loss of Federal Police life in the history of the Force, but now we have incontrovertible evidence that the Chozo have turned Pirate. _Incontrovertible_ —that was the word you chose, wasn’t it, Aurora?”

“That is correct, Chairman.”

Hardy blinked a few times and seemed to be thinking.

“If I may, sir,” Dane cleared his throat, “I’ve been working with Unit 242 for twelve years. When she gives definitive remarks like that, she means it.”

“I’m confident in the Aurora, Dane; that’s not my concern. The implications—” Here, he momentarily looked skyward before gazing back at them intensely. “What about the other Aurora? The old one! The Mother thing! You speculated _it_ had gone rogue, killed all the Chozo, defected. Isn’t that still a possibility?”

“Miscommunication has occurred,” cooed 242. “We never proposed Unit 002 needed to commit treachery against the Chozo, only against the Network and the Federation. The simplest explanation is that the Chozo reprogrammed 002 using technology heretofore considered impossible. 002 is utilizing Chozo-built planetary defense systems, most likely at the Chozo’s behest.”

“Both, then. We’re fighting a rogue Aurora _and_ the Chozo.”

“All data suggests this, yes.”

Everyone in the room saw it: the moment Hardy actually sought an escape. Again, Dane pressed his advantage: “Sir, the Chozo have proven to be hazards to the galactic peace on the highest order. They’ve manufactured multiple illegal weapons and turned them on our men and women— _murdered_ them. We tried to find them, to talk to them, but they’ve disappeared. We’ve tried the ground-assault approach. I don’t see how many other options we have here, sir.”

Hardy was nodding, but his eyes were glazed over. _He still doesn’t get it_. “Zebes is a clear and present danger to the Federation,” Khier-Palisque said. “Chairman Hardy, give the word, and I will gladly lead a heavy attack fleet back to Zephos and bombard the planet from a safe distance.” _There! That got his attention_.

“Bombard?” Hardy shook his head. “We’ve been over this, agent, I can’t order an orbital strike on an active constituent world.”

“The Chozo have allied themselves with the Pirates; they are our enemies.” Khier-Palisque’s volume increased, in addition to the rate of speech.

“An attack on this scale would be tantamount to war!”

“War?” Howell could barely contain his fury. “We just sat through the full report on lives lost in the _thousands_! If that isn’t war, sir, I don’t know what is. We must retaliate!”

In that moment, in that room, the two men and the leafy serpent felt a keen love for one another. They understood, each one, what it took and what it would take to fight this enemy. And now they knew one another’s resolve, worn bright and bold on their sleeves. If only given the chance, they would go to battle together. They would win. Because they understood. _Now, Hardy_ , their thoughts said, _now it’s your turn_.

“We will retaliate, sector chief. By god, do you three think this hasn’t hit me? You think I don’t get it? We lost good people and they will be avenged. But—” _Oh goddamn it._ “—we have to do it intelligently. The Galactic Federation hasn’t, in its two hundred and thirty-five years, _ever_ engaged in open warfare. And it never will! Hell, we don’t even have an army—it is _constitutionally forbidden_. I assume you’re familiar with the constitution—that little scrap of paper—the only thing keeping the rights of the citizens and the powers of the government right where they need to be? No, under my command, the Galactic Federal Police will not decay into some common military. We’re here to uphold the law and keep the _peace!_ ”

You had to hand it to the old man, he knew how to pull out the politician hat when it mattered. Howell had seen Hardy maneuver through the tumultuous seas of the Federation’s bureaucracy with uncommon grace (and stubbornness). Still, Howell had to try: “How, then, sir? How do we respond if not in kind?”

“There are many ways to win a battle, Howell, and not all of them involve death and destruction. You might have forgotten during your tenure out there in the sticks, but here, on Daiban, I have my fair share of sway. I can get shit done here.”

“The Galactic Council? The Senate? Politics?” Khier-Palisque asked, innocently enough.

“Klono help us…” Dane mumbled.

“All useful tools, agent.” He massaged his mustache. Apparently, he was formulating a plan.

Khier-Palisque pressed: “Sir, help me understand. The problem is here. There are no Chozo on Daiban.”

“Come on, agent, we both know, with Space Pirates, the problem is never localized in one area. And no, there are no Chozo here. Believe me, if there were, I’d pluck their avian asses bald and roast ‘em with stuffing. But their embassy is here. The center of galactic commerce and legislation is here. And _I’m_ here. What I’m saying, gentlemen—and Aurora—is this planet is an arsenal and I’ll use every weapon here at my disposal to find those sonsofbitches and make them pay.”

“You want to go after the Chozo colony worlds?” Howell crossed his arms.

“Bingo. Zebes has proven to be impenetrable. We won’t forget it, but it doesn’t hold the entirety of the Chozo race in Federation Space. They’ve shown their true colors, so now we’ll show ‘em what it means to make an enemy of the Federation.”

“But if they had those kinds of weapons on Zebes, wouldn’t it stand to reason they’ll have similar armaments on their other worlds?”

“We’ll have to be careful, you’re right.”

Dane shook his head. “They’re in league with the Pirates! With all due respect, cutting off their trade and slapping sanctions on them won’t do a fucking thing! Goddamn Re-Dacs have their own supply chains—ones we’ve never been able to sus out, no matter what we do.”

Hardy again showed a palm. “This is only the beginning of our campaign, boys. Gimme some credit. I have more than a few ideas kicking around in my head, but I’ll need to confer with the Council before anything can move forward.”

“Sir, debating this and implementing it could take months,” Howell said with deliberate calm. “Please, at least consider passing along our recommendation for immediate retaliation in force.”

“Howell, debating _that_ could take even longer!” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “But I’ll bring it up. I can’t promise anything’ll come of it or that you won’t have a few very powerful individuals on your case for suggesting this.”

Dane looked worried, but Howell smirked. The Al-Jauzan betrayed nothing. “That’s fine, Chairman,” said Howell, “I’m used to having enemies. All part of the job.”


	5. El Dorado

“Good morning; this is DIN. It is currently ten-o-clock, Sextilis the sixteenth, 235 here in Etváçous-Daiban City. I’m Harriet Bonn—”

“And I’m Diegus Starson.”

“Welcome to Interstellar Sparks where we bring you the top, up-to-date, headline stories from across the galaxy. Today, we have a special guest: Morgan Tan, author of _Perennials: A Chozo History_ , here to discuss the shocking rumors about the ancient, supposedly peaceful race.”

“Thanks for having me on, Harriet and Diegus. Wow, it’s been—gosh—how many years since I’ve been to Daiban? Those new towers they put up in Shemr Bay are absolutely stunning.”

“Morgan, those went up six years ago.”

“Oh my.”

“I think we may need to take you around and show you the sights.”

“Maybe! Ha-ha…”

“So, Morgan, I think the comment on everyone’s minds is: _you told us so_. Right?”

“Ah, come now, Diegus, I wouldn’t say it quite like that. But I _did_ publish this book two years before BSL’s expedition on SR-388.”

“Where they found the Metroids.”

“Exactly—the first of many evidences that the Chozo’s peaceful nature is, indeed, a façade.”

“But how? How did you come to these conclusions before anyone else? What led you to question these prime examples of galactic peace and charity?”

“ _Former_ examples, Diegus; but I just did the research. I took a step back and looked at the big picture. It took a while, but—well, it’s all in there, if you’d like to read it.”

“I have! I have, and it’s—especially for an historical analysis— _riveting_.”

“Tell me, Morgan, if you—”

 

Terry cut the volume from the program. “We’re making our decent on the planet now,” he told his passengers.

They were in good spirits, all things considered. News from Ogygia, about the disaster at Zephos, had hit them hard, right out of their sleep pods. For a horrific moment, Terry thought Howell would call him off the hunt. _Back to Ogygia, son, we need you. Forget the Chozo. Forget Kallie._

But Terry’s fortune held and all Howell had told him was, “Things have taken a turn here, so expect the same for Daiban. Keep your wits about you. Oh, and don’t fuck this up.” He’d said that with a wry smile. “You know what you have to do. Do it. And report in as soon as you find anything.”

Terry let the program run as they entered atmosphere, but he didn’t listen. He’d hear it all in the coming weeks. For now, he focused on traffic. The Capitol Planet, resplendent upon approach, was now hidden from him by a blanket of fire. He relied on altimeters, proximity sensors for other crafts, and the guiding commands from the landing area.

At any given time, one could expect anywhere from three to five hundred crafts entering or exiting Daiban’s atmosphere. Control towers groundside and traffic monitor stations in orbit kept the flow with strict, regimented schedules and commands. Terry knew a few officers who worked atmo on Daiban. Every story they told him gave him an additional reason to be grateful for his position.

The fire under them abated, taking the thunderous rumbling with it. For a few seconds, they soared through cotton candy clouds, then, in breathtaking swiftness, the city rose to meet them. Bathed in golden light from the star Nirvana, Daiban’s planet-spanning city looked like any one of the myriad paradises described in ancient myth. Spires of gleaming metal and sparkling glass pierced the clouds, their foundations holding to the ground with the herculean strength of interstellar ingenuity. They were the spears, held by a legion of Titans, their numbers vast enough to curve past the horizon. All around them flew the birds of paradise: billions of skycars, landers, transports, yachts, planes, and speeders. There were no true birds, of course. They’d been removed to a sanctuary off-world two centuries ago.

Terry followed angelic floating running lights down into the city to join the dance. Other crafts flanked them on all sides; more little sparks of atmospheric entry could be seen beyond the clouds. Down they flew, watching the forest of spires expand, gain detail, become a dense, living city. Their sky-born entourage dispersed, each to its own destination. Terry’s destination lay straight ahead now: a tapered tower of emerald which sprouted platforms out from its body like shelf fungi, arranged in a vertical spiral. Each platform was a landing pad, most already occupied. The running lights guided them in and down onto a clear platform near the top and they disembarked.

His passengers thanked him as they hurried on their ways. Eventually, after completing ground checks and gathering his own luggage, he took the elevator down. Of course it offered a view of the skyline during the decent. Daiban loved to show itself off at every opportunity.

 _Ground Level_ was where the elevator—and enclosing building—stopped, but the ground itself was still far below. Terry stepped out onto a wide pedway. He looked up and saw rays of light dancing on and between the buildings. Then, just to add a yin to the yang, he looked down, past the roots of these upper buildings and down into the canopies of the lower sets. And all around buzzed the incessant aerial traffic.

Directly across a gap in the pedway rose a monolithic building, its walls rented out on all sides to a wide range of advertisements. At the moment, two children, one human, the other Mallipo, engaged in a fantastical battle over the last piece of candy in a bag. After a swordfight on the rim of a volcano, the Tellurian won, but then helped up his green-skinned friend and shared the treasure with her. The brand exploded into frame, filling the entire two-hundred-square-meter space. _Uppy-Do: An adventure in every bite!_ Terry smiled, shook his head, and moved on.

He’d already sent notice of his arrival to Howell; next step was reporting in to the cooperating officer in the Daiban department. Captain Prel. Standing on the bus, on his way to the Tramorine Building, he tried to go over everything he knew about the captain from reading her file during the flight in. It wasn’t much. He sighed and watched a park flash by outside in a blaze of green. Hopefully she wouldn’t fit the Mallipo stereotype: _diminished stature, temper, and mind_. Was that racist? He decided it probably was and mentally dropped it to focus on something else.

 _Kallie_. His smile came back automatically. She, too, had received a message upon his arrival, but she hadn’t yet replied. Fair enough; she was working and she _hated_ distractions at work. Personally, Terry thought she could do with a few more distractions to take her mind off the wearying world of journalism. He bit his lip and remembered the last time he’d brought that up with her.

_You know how much this job means to me—how much it took for me to get here! Terry, I love you, but you are quite literally the limit of what I can afford in my personal life. Sorry if that sounds shitty, but it’s true. I can’t back off from this or I’ll lose my grip and maybe never get it back. That’s how it is in my field. Can’t you understand that?_

 He could understand that. That’s what made him want to push harder. He’d seen people in the Force driving themselves the same way. All of them started out the same way: tenacious, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and decent. But, inevitably, they all fell off in their own ways, be it alcohol, bad relationships, hygiene, procrastination, or any other symptom of burnout. And they all ended up nervous wrecks, relegated to a desk buried under six feet of paperwork. He didn’t want that for Kallie.

He had no delusions; he wasn’t going to save her, win her, be her hero. No. He was going to marry her. And they would talk. Well, perhaps they would argue. But, dammit, he was _going_ to distract her the way she deserved! And she would distract him. They’d keep each other sane.

Sanity was all he could hope for in this world so swiftly turning to madness.

The bus emerged from a tunnel and rounded a sharp curve. Just as it came into view, the announcement pinged over the PA: “Soon arriving at: Tramorine Station—Tramorine Island, Galactic Federal Police Headquarters, and the Gregson Elite Hotel.”

A turquoise ocean, flecked with golden sun sparkles, stretched away from the imminent shoreline, but not before a small, artificial island. Tramorine Island was dominated by the eponymous building which served as galactic nexus for the Federation’s law enforcement. Shaped like half an egg, cut lengthwise, the oblong dome structure dwarfed the surrounding buildings. It rose from sea-level and capped at the equivalent of half-way up the upper levels of the city proper. A monster. A magnificent monster. And that was just what was visible above the surface.

Upon closer approach, the egg shape was lost as the building itself—its windows, platforms, struts, pillars—came into focus. By the time they arrived at the station, the structure looked more like an imposing mountain.

Half the bus emptied out into the station with Terry; and they all headed in the same direction. _I think it’s more crowded out on the pedway than in the bus_ , Terry’s mind snarked. They bustled along, through a wide cathedral of ad-bearing pillars, and into the yawning mouth of Tramorine.

Instantly, the crowd broke like a swarm of ants, leaving Terry alone, staring up and around at the cavernous lobby. The wall behind him, all window, rose fifteen stories in a long curve, finally meeting the far wall at an acute angle. Balconies, verandas, elevator tubes, and winding walkways presented a veritable cross-section of the building. Every level visible teamed with life. The floor before him glistened with kiosks and more advertisement pillars. Everything and everyone had a definite purpose and presence, but be damned if it was immediately apparent what any of those were at first glance. Compare this to the stark, rustic Ogygia or the claustrophobic, sterile habitations under Palduette and, suddenly, you don’t understand a thing about the universe anymore. The closest comparison Terry could make was Buenos Aires, his birth city. He’d moved away at the age of five (to Neith City, orbiting Venus of all places), but his sparse memories from back then clashed with this new experience. That wasn’t a city. _This_ was a city. A true metropolis.

Numbers and scale flooded into Terry’s gaping mind. Buenos Aires housed maybe fifteen million people—maybe more; the Earth in total had recently hit forty-two billion. Daiban’s population was almost ten times that: 402 billion, and growing faster than any other known planet. Ten Earths. It was almost enough to take the blood out of his knees. Sure, he knew, as everyone knew, the population of the Galactic Capitol, but now he saw. Now he (partially) understood.

His eyes roamed as his mind attempted its canny gymnastics, viewing over and over the gilded opulence of Tramorine and, by extension or focused expression, Daiban itself. Soon, they found the faces. Never before had Terry seen such a myriad. Human, Mallip, and Ceratopsid he was accustomed to and those he saw in droves, but bolstered by other forms, most vaguely familiar, but some completely new. He turned in place, focusing his attention on looking past the humans and humanoids—a taller order than he’d have expected, as his eyes tended to latch onto the like and skim over the unlike.

There was a Zegg: diminutive, with pointed, elfin features, but otherwise _Cognata sapiens_ (a term for the not-quite-human races with ambiguous, hotly-contested relation to Tellurian humans). There went a group of Al-Jauzans, swimming across the mirror-polished floor, each one indistinguishable from Khier-Palisque, Terry’s only frame of reference. That one there was a Seroni, easy to spot due to the ten foot height towering above the crowd. Sunlight didn’t reflect off its fogged, glassy skin; it _refracted_ through it.

And then there were the species ( _races, Terry, get it right!_ ) he had no names for. Tentacles, eyeballs, sea-urchin-like spines, and a few too many arthropodin bodies. A creatu— _person_ —scuttled past him at an alarming rate, appearing to be a tall spider wearing a… mushroom hat? Was that a hat, or—but it was gone. He suppressed a shudder and felt the inevitable guilt. Almost half of the crowd wore environment suits, obscuring their true visages.

These were his colleagues. Well, a few of them would be visitors, but most of them were on the Force ( _brothers in arms_ , as Howell would have said). Terry considered it and felt himself smile. The awesome power of Daiban wasn’t in its construction or its politics; it was in what it symbolized. The galaxy. _Our_ galaxy. His smile broadened.

All at once, he realized he was looking at something new. Off to his right, a few dozen feet away, a jostling mob gathered outside. They had banners and signs. Making his way closer, he read their messages, while the window-wall blocked their vigorous chanting.

_Justice for Zebes!_

_Fuck the police!_

_We Stand by the Chozo!_

_Keep your guns, give us wings_

_The Chozo want peace, Vogl wants war!_

_legalize benny_

_We don’t need no fucking army!_

_Make love, not war_

_Vogl-Hardy for the front lines, 235_

The phrases were accompanied by a handful of colorful illustrations and graphics. Here was another thing Terry had never seen before in person. Nobody protests at the tiny outposts which had been his haunt the last five years. First of all, there just aren’t that many people living out there; second, the vast majority are either directly connected to or are once removed from the Federal Police. Not so here, clearly.

And what did they hope to accomplish? From what he’d been told, Terry had no doubt who the enemy was: pirates. Anyone working with the enemy became the enemy. The Chozo harbored (or otherwise capitulated to) the pirates, so they were the enemy. Where did these people find controversy? Sure, it was sad, it always was to see anyone fall down a dark path. But reality was reality. Accept it and move on. Indicting Chairmen Vogl and Hardy for warmongering was fallacious and backward. Doubtful any among those gathered to protest had ever seen the true ravages of the conflict with the pirates. They didn’t know the stakes. He shook his head and turned towards an elevator.

 

Prel’s office was on the thirty-forth floor, nowhere near a view. Thankfully, the AI running the directory provided Terry with turn-by-turn directions through the maze. He had long since passed into the operational heart of Tramorine and, as he continued, he became more and more uncomfortable. Every passing officer refused staunchly to return his _good morning_ s or _hello_ s. Most kept on straight ahead; some shot him confused—even disapproving—looks. Did no one have manners here?

Finally he came to the door marked _Outer Sectors Special Investigations Administration_. Then, scrawled by hand on a piece of paper and taped underneath: _Duck Hunters_. Before he could knock, the door slid open and a secretary almost tackled him on his way out. The secretary mumbled some form of quick apology and was gone.

Inside, the room was alive. Desks, each one no doubt a terminal connected to another location across the cosmos, sat in a wide grid. People were hard at work at all of them, sometimes two or three to a station. Terry could taste the stress in the air. It wasn’t loud—too busy to make that much noise. He walked down the length of the room, between the desks. Not a head turned nor eye flicked in his direction. He came to Prel’s desk, exactly opposite the door, unnoticed, and stood, momentarily musing how, at times of high alert, one could just waltz through the inner sanctum of the Federal Police. After all, who has time to worry about security when you’re busy securing the galaxy?

Prel’s full name, as told by her desk’s plaque, was Mubahi Prel-784. Terry had little experience with Mallip culture, let alone their naming conventions, but he understood their surnames almost always consisted of the name proper, followed by a number. Why? No idea. Maybe it was something to do with population control on their home planet. Maybe they found numbers appealing.

The captain herself looked as one would expect a Mallipo to look: short and squat, long arms with a few more joints than humans’, a thin neck, a frog-like face, and a pair of antennae on the forehead. Where she sat on her chair, her head was about level with Terry’s, but he knew, should she jump down and stand toe-to-toe with him, she’d reach just past his waist. Of course, she’d have a few more toes, given her four stubby little legs. Her skin was mottled olive green and her hair, growing just along the scalp line, was pulled back into a long silver-and-black braid.

She was busy typing something, looking back and forth rapidly between the terminal and a holopad. She still hadn’t noticed Terry. He cleared his throat and she looked up, eyes momentarily bulging out of their wrinkly lids.

“Ma’am, Assistant Sector Chief Terrance Utem, reporting from Syracuse Ravine,” he said.

“Syracuse Ravine,” she repeated in a monotone before realization dawned on her. “Oh it’s you. Didn’t notice you come in. We’ve had our hands full.”

“I noticed.” He put on a gracious face. “I’m here to help in whatever capacity—”

“Forgive me, but we don’t need any more help,” she said, presenting a palm. “What we need are open ears in the senate. But you can’t give us that.”

He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

“You got here a little late. Not your fault; the tollway’s got its limits like anything else. If you’d gotten here before the fiasco in the Zephos system, we’d have loved to give you some help, but as things stand now…” She considered her work, shut things down, and sat back, hands clasped over her stomach. “While you were in transit, things took a turn. I’m sure you’ve noticed. Howell told me all about your mission to find the Chozo, but that was before the whole damned galaxy started looking for them. It’s not in my nature to be overly brusque, but, well, get in line.”

Realistic though the sentiment was, it still stung. She seemed to be waiting for a response from him, but before he could speak, she softened her features and went on.

“You won’t be running a solo investigation into the Chozo, as Howell had intended, but we do have some other areas which could use some bolstering. So how about it? Still want to stick around?”

“Of course, captain.” No way he was turning tail. Not on this. Not on Kallie.

“You can dispense with the formalities; you’re an ASC, we’re of equivalent rank. Call me Mu.” Like the Greek letter.

“Terry,” he nodded, returning her smile. “But, technically, as local cooperating officer, you have seniority.”

“Technically, sure. But, same time, you’re one man’s retirement away from jumping ahead the equivalent of two of my ranks.”

“Come on, Mu, everyone in the Force knows: desk jobs on Daiban have twice the pull. And twice the pay.”

“And twice the hassle.” She shook her head, grinning. “You’re okay, Terry.”

“I’m actually kind of relieved.”

“Oh yeah? Why’s that? You weren’t afraid of me, were you?” And for a moment, she assumed the look and presence of a snake, ready to strike. Clearly, there was a modicum of sincerity in the question.

“Not necessarily,” Terry said carefully. “It’s just, you don’t seem to fit this place.”

“How so?”

“You’re taking time to talk to me. You’re not in a terrible hurry to get somewhere or do something.”

“For now,” she replied with a little laugh.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“I saw those protesters when I came in—”

A hand slid up her face and massaged around the defined well surrounding one of her eyeballs. “Don’t get me started on them. What is it today? _Bring back the trees? Impeach Vogl? Fix my internet?_ ”

“Actually, it’s about the Chozo. They seem to think there’s still some debate about the Chozo’s connection with the pirates. Is that a… common opinion here?”

“Unfortunately,” she sighed.

“But how?” Terry found himself preaching to the choir conductor and cut his sermon short after a few sentences. He concluded with: “They’ll have to get used to the idea sooner or later.”

“Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. I probably don’t have to tell you that there are still some people out there who resent the Mallip for our actions preceding the Federation. And that was over two centuries ago. Public opinion is a fickle thing; when you feel secure in its glow, it swings to the other extreme, leaving you behind; when you want it to change, it locks in place with uncommon stubbornness. You’ll learn this all soon enough, being here in the shit.”

“I guess I’ll have to.” Fighting the pirate threat alongside the hearts and minds of the Federation itself? Terry wasn’t so sure he was up to the task.

She resumed her wide smirk. “Don’t worry about it. We get transfers from outposts all the time here. For them, it’s tricky to get used to a community not entirely focused on the Force—a community with so wildly ranging views. You’re lucky. You’ll be here one day, gone the next, back to the sunny side of a colony world where we pigs can do no wrong.” They shared a laugh at that. “If you want my advice, I’ll tell you to just ignore the rabble. Not your problem. Focus on the task at hand. Get it done. They want to moan and cry about your job? Let them. You’ll be too busy to notice.”

She considered him for a moment and shook her head. “You look ready to jump out of your boots. You have something else going on? Somewhere else you’re itching to be?”

He was embarrassed. Did it really show through? “Eh, I do have a—”

“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s fascinating. Look, I’m swamped and sitting around getting acquainted’ll get me nowhere fast. You got somewhere to be? Get. I’ll pull together something for you to do. Report back here tomorrow morning. Nine. _No earlier_ , got it?”

“Got it, yeah.” Mu had been gruff, but not abrasive in her tone. It was clear to Terry this was a gesture. _Welcome to the meat grinder, kid. We look out for each other down here, but after this, you’d better be able to pull your weight._ “Thanks.”

She pierced him with a knowing gaze as she leaned back in to her work. “Don’t thank me yet, Terry. All the officers in here? Hate my guts.” She leaned to the side and her voice became more of a croak. “Hey Ixy, you love me, right?”

Ixy’s voice soared over from the far corner of the room: “Hell no, ma’am, your office is a Class XIII Wasteland.”

“See?” Mu chortled, dismissed him with a wave, and resumed her work.

 

 _Daiban_ had two meanings: planet and city. In an ever-expanding galactic civilization, it wasn’t unheard-of to have a planet take a city’s name or vice-versa. But Daiban’s case was special. Where did the city end and the rest of the planet start? The easy answer is nowhere. The urban sprawl engulfed every last square centimeter of the land—and some of the seafloor, too (aquatic sapient races had to be accommodated like the rest).

One doesn’t fully grasp the true meaning of _planet-wide city_ until presented with a map.

Having seen the world from orbit, then during landing, and then moving between the buildings, Terry thought he knew the scope and scale. In his mind, sure, it’d be a piece of cake to stop by Prel’s office before meeting Kallie at the DIN building. Same city, right?

Wrong. Daiban was one continuous urban environment, but, for the sake of organization, governance, and general popular sanity, it had to be broken into at-least-nation-sized districts. Delineated on purely political lines, these districts took the name _city_ for themselves. And why not? The smallest district, Tugin-Daiban City, supported three billion people.

Tramorine, where Terry stood gaping at a map display at a kiosk in the lobby, was situated on an island just off the north-eastern coast of Camer-Daiban City. The DIN building and Kallie, meanwhile, were situated in a triangular bend of a river running through the heart of Etváçous-Daiban City. Two whole cities south-west of him. He’d have to cross an area equivalent to the entirety of continental Europe to get to her. _Guess I’d better get moving_ , he sighed internally.

He made his way down to one of the lower levels of Tramorine, again using the building’s directory AI. There, he found a subway terminal and locked he eyes on a holographic map depicting a rainbow spiderweb recently put through a tumble dryer. At least, that’s what it looked like. It was the subway line map for Camer-Daiban City. Terry didn’t even want to imagine what the map would look like zoomed out to show the whole planet. _It would be so much simpler to just rent a skycar and fly there_ , he thought, while simultaneously understanding the time he would save here and now by riding the train. It seemed paradoxical, but the subterranean transport was much faster than air travel, given the more powerful inertial dampening effects on the larger train cars, allowing for greater accel/decel, as well as the lack of traffic underground. He’d heard the subway system on Daiban was exquisitely designed to mitigate congestion. Now he’d find out first-hand.

On the train, his thoughts returned to Kallie and he found himself bouncing between multiple possible scenarios of their impending reunion. Each fantasy had its own script; Kallie’s parts seemed to write themselves, but his lines were blank. He resisted the urge to fill them in. They’d talk and it’d be natural—no line reads, no swelling of the music, no theatrics, no bullshit.

Well… maybe he could get some flowers.

 

* * *

 

Just as Terry’s train was leaving its station under the Tramorine Building, a taxi was dropping off a visitor on a landing pad near the apex of the structure’s dome. She got the call she was expecting during her elevator ride down.

She answered without a visual: “Yes, Dylan?”

“Ma’am, what’s your s—”

“I stepped away for some time alone, Dylan.”

Dylan sighed long and exaggeratedly. “Ma’am, you really have to think about your safety.”

“I thought I payed you to do that for me.” She smirked and didn’t wait for a reply: “In any case, my security is quite sound at the moment, given my present whereabouts. Go on and get some lunch; I’ll be back at the office in no time.”

“Are you at least going to tell me where you are, ma’am?”

“No, I don’t think I will,” she said with a chuckle, which brought out another sigh from Dylan.

“Have it your way, ma’am. I’ll see you later.”

“Indeed. Bye-bye, Dlyan,” and she hung up.

Poor Agent Dylan—Senator Keaton, smiling to herself there in the elevator, seriously doubted anyone had warned the young man about her when he took the job. Protecting politicians and other high-rollers was what he and his division did and they did it well. Dylan was an exemplary bodyguard, as evidenced by his continued concern for the senator even after so many of her stunts and jests. He just needed to lighten up—give her a little space.

Ah, but who could blame him? They might not have warned him about her personality, but she knew for a fact they’d filled him in on a certain incident six years ago. Keaton had been on a publicity jaunt to the Palain system where, on the seventh planet, a small, relatively young Mallip colony had discovered ruins of an ancient civilization under the ice. Keaton went to promote the xenoarchaeological effort of her people, but also of the Federation itself (the Panethereal Academy, the Federation’s scholastic branch, had partnered with the colonial archaeologists). She’d been giving a speech out in front of the main dig site when it happened; she was lying flat on her back, stunned but unscathed, once it was over.

She must’ve looked so foolish, cut off midsentence, thrown backwards by a strong, metal arm, letting out nary a sound until that same arm had helped her back to her feet. And then, what did she say? “Oh.”

On the ground, staring up at the steady gray sky, she of course knew what was happening and, for a moment, thought the assassination attempt had been no mere attempt at all. But the strong arm had belonged to no agent of the pirates; it belonged instead to a Federal Police Sergeant known as Samus Aran. Sergeant Aran had anticipated the attack and thrown Keaton back onto the platform. Two of the three shots fired by the assassins that day struck her armor—struck and made neither dent nor scratch. In turn, Aran had killed three of the six assailants. Two others were killed by others in Aran’s squad while the sixth and final assassin took her own life with the shot intended for Keaton. All of this Keaton heard, looking up at the sky and Aran’s imposing, blazing-orange silhouette against it, standing guard over her.

There’d been inquiries and an investigation, but no reason for the attempt on Keaton’s life came out. Pirates had tried to kill her because they were pirates. Samus Aran had saved her because she was an officer of the Force.

The two women had talked afterwards. Keaton had thanked Aran and, in such cliché fashion, Aran had suggested the exchange was all part of the job. In fact, all of Aran’s words that day had been rote, police-jargon responses. She was detached, calm, collected—even boring—but not quite stoic. Aran had smiled comfortingly to her (once she’d taken off her helmet) and had even held her hand. That same hand, not fifteen minutes prior, had taken three lives—two Tellurian, the other Mallipo.

Senator Keaton had been having breakfast at home with her husband when she received the news: a bounty hunter named Samus Aran had been among those killed in the disastrous battle in the Zephos system. She knew then she had a promise to keep. They’d kept in touch, the Senator and the Hunter, even after Samus had left the Force. They rarely talked about their work in their occasional communiques; usually, it was light discussion of popular music and shows. Inevitably, Samus would lament her inability to keep up with the latest trends, leading to Keaton recommending things she thought the hunter would appreciate. They grew to learn one another’s tastes, which were quite disparate. Samus turned out to be far from boring; Keaton’s initial assessment of her was something she kept secret. It shamed her.

Through all their correspondence, a few details slipped through cracks the unspoken-rule-walls. One such detail about Samus now led Keaton here, to the headquarters of the Federal Police. Someone in here deserved to know the truth. She owed them that, through Samus. She owed Samus.

“Arriving at level fourteen,” chimed the elevator. She stepped out and soon found her way to her destination: Weston Gemini Central Dispatch. Somewhere in here, there was a man—a human—who had also been there that day, on Palain VII.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” asked someone at a nearby desk. Keaton blinked back to the moment and smiled his way.

“Yes, I believe you can. Is Sector Chief Adam Malkovich here at the moment?” she asked.

“One moment, I’ll see if he’s free.” He proceeded to send a quick message on his holopad. It beeped back almost right away. “You’re in luck; he’ll be along shortly. If you’d like, you can have a seat just over there.”

“No need,” said a smooth, strong voice behind Keaton.

“Ah, sir,” said the officer, a little surprised.

Keaton turned and took in the view. Chief Malkovich strutted over to her, tall, trim, dark, and almost unreasonably handsome. No, not almost— _how in any of the Void Hells did a human pair produce such a specimen?_ He offered a hand and, for a moment, his smile nearly drove her political poise straight out of her. But she took the hand and offered her own charm to combat his. It paled in comparison.

“Senator Keaton; it’s been too long. How’ve you been?” Malkovich cooed. His handshake carried the same charisma as his smile and gait.

“I’ve been well,” she said.

“I’m glad to hear it.” His smile had broadened and warmed.

“I hope you’re doing well, chief.”

“I am. Well, the time difference is a little jarring, but it’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before. I got here only yesterday.”

“I heard. In fact, that’s why I came to see you.” She glanced around.

Before she could make her suggestion, he did it for her, arm swept out in the direction of the hallway: “Shall we?”

They walked slowly along one of the exterior halls—one with windows overlooking the strait, the city beyond it an impending wave of molten gold. Though the rest of the building writhed with ceaseless work, this stretch was almost dead.

“How is it on Virgilla these days?” she asked, referring to the planet housing the Weston Gemini Sector HQ, Malkovich’s command.

“Quiet, as always.”

“You sound disappointed.” That got a smirk from him.

“It’s all I can hope for the people there. I just get a little cabin-feverish sometimes with nothing much to do. That close to the Capitol, there’s no pirate activity to speak of. I’m not the type of guy who just gets a hobby to pass the time.”

 “Hobby? Why not a Mr. or Mrs. Malkovich?” They grinned to each other along the meter in height difference. “Come on, it’s a big sea and you’d be quite a catch.”

“No, no Mrs. Malkovich,” he said with a laugh.

“I do have a legitimate reason for coming to see you today.”

He must’ve sensed the change in tone. He waited.

“You remember, of course, that day on Palain VII?”

“I was there; yes, I remember.” He sighed and she knew: _he knows what’s coming_. “This is about Samus Aran.”

“Yes. I’m not sure how much she kept in contact with you following her departure from the police…”

“She didn’t. I, uh, hadn’t heard from her in the interim years. Not until I got the news.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I won’t pretend to know what happened between her and your team; nor will I speculate.” He was looking straight ahead of them now and she couldn’t draw his gaze. Their pace had also slowed. “We…” _How do I say this without it stinging him?_ “I occasionally reached out to her. It may sound absurd, but we became sort of pen-pals after a time.”

“Nothing absurd about it. I’m glad she had a friend to talk to.”

“Indeed. Talking, though, as I’m sure you know, wasn’t her strong-suit.”

The chief wore a strange expression, as if looking at something on the horizon. “She said enough… when it mattered.” He sighed and massaged one side of his clean, sharp jaw. “Given the way things have gone lately—with the Chozo and Zebes—maybe I should’ve listened to her more closely. Or, no… prompted more from her.”

 _Does he already know? To push this and potentially open old wounds would be terrible. Still…_ “She did sometimes talk about Zebes and her family there. Did she not discuss them with you? You trained her, right?”

“She was pretty-much combat-trained the day she enrolled; to say I trained her would be taking too much credit. But, yes, she was in my cadet class; and she only briefly talked about the Chozo—to me, at least. She was, uh, closer with the others.” He seemed momentarily uncomfortable. He collected himself as quickly as the weakness had appeared. “The other cadets, I mean. She got along pretty well with Higgs. And Ian.”

Keaton slowed their pace more still and spoke gently. “Your brother?” He nodded. At that moment, something uncanny occurred: Keaton opened her mouth to say, finally, what she had intended from the beginning, but she was disallowed. Malkovich’s eyes were on her— _in_ her. His gaze took hold of her. They’d stopped walking. How long did they just stand there, him looking down at her with such presence? She couldn’t tell. But she knew, then, for sure.

_There’s no need to tell me, Senator. And even if I was unaware, some things are better left unsaid. Samus Aran was close with many people, myself included. Losing her is a wound I’ll have to weather with time. Whatever she told you—whatever she let show through her emotional armor—keep it. It is yours now._

His gaze softened. Somehow, it appeared to lose color (even though his irises retained their shocking blue hue). “I understand,” Keaton stammered.

“Ma’am?” His voice was flat.

Keaton collected herself, hoping beyond hope this human was oblivious to the Mallip body language signifying embarrassment. Even so, something told her body language—or spoken language, for that matter—didn’t really matter to this man. He saw more.

After that, they talked about other things and resumed their walk, which now curved along the dome’s egg-shaped outline. How long was he on Daiban before returning to his post? Three days. How was Wilson, the Senator’s husband, doing? Well. How were the debates going in the Senate? Ploddingly. Where did Keaton herself land on the Chozo issue?

“I believe we must absolutely be sure before committing to any course of action,” she said. “We are quite certain the Aurora Unit on Zebes has turned pirate, but I’m not convinced the Chozo must also be held accountable for the machine. After all, it was built by the Panethereal Academy, so if we hold the Chozo responsible, why not indict the Academy? And—by extension—the Federation itself? Where does guilt by association stop?”

Malkovich simply nodded. Keaton grinned.

“Ah, but I’m waxing political now. Sorry—old habit.”

“No, by all means, wax on. Within the Force, there’s really only one viewpoint; I’m glad to hear others.”

“Don’t misunderstand; if it turns out the Chozo are to blame for this tragedy, I will whole-heartedly support justice done against them, right up to the limit of the law.”

Malkovich scrutinized her. “The limit of the law for engaging in space piracy is lethal force, Senator. Are you sure you’re prepared for that?”

“I am,” she said, her voice cold and confident. “There are those in the Senate now who argue for trials against captured pirates.”

“We’ve tried that,” he interjected with a chuckle. “Didn’t work.”

“Their minds are blanked, aren’t they? Captured Space Pirates?”

Malkovich nodded gravely. “No matter what we do, no matter who or what the captured party is, they give us one response to any question asked: _REDACTED_. It’s where we get one of our nicknames for them: _Re-Dacs_. The words you chose were apt, Senator: _their minds are blanked_. They don’t blank their own minds; someone or something else does. Something external… something controlling. _REDACTED_ —it _removes_ information from their minds, but leaves the idea behind that the information has been removed.”

“It’s a taunt.”

Again, he nodded.

“They can’t be put on trial. Even if they could, it’d be too dangerous. I’m a walking testament to the dangers; they can be anyone, anywhere.”

“Not anyone.” He smirked sidelong at her. “We know we’re not.”

“Couldn’t you have said the same of the Chozo a month ago? I sure could’ve—with complete confidence.”

“Fine, then. I know _I’m_ not.”

“And I know _I’m_ not.”

“Thank god for that, ma’am.” They laughed together.


	6. Reunions and Revenants

Of all the so-called “garden worlds” in the galaxy, Jamoru took the proverbial cake. Usually, the term “garden world” applied to any plant-life-bearing planet or moon. But, in Jamoru’s case, the phrase became quite literal. That world burst with floral color and variety—and the smells! There grew flowers with scents of such chemical subtlety and finesse modern science was still attempting to rationalize. The native population, the Jamor, didn’t need to rationalize it; the plants smelled good, no matter who you were or where you came from. Made sense to them.

It was really too bad such flowers only grew on Jamoru without expensive technical and chemical aid; otherwise, Terry wouldn’t’ve had to spend ¤400 on a bouquet. He could’ve bought cheaper, regular flowers, but ah, what the hell? Today was a special occasion and Kallie deserved it.

He told himself he deserved it, too. Recently, he’d read something on the internet about furlough-shock (any officer of the Force was familiar with the feeling of intense alienation upon returning to what was and should again be home—a sort of reverse-culture-shock). The article listed a few ways to mitigate the effects; one of them claimed that spending money on frivolities could help ground a person. Terry knew consumerist swill when he saw it. Even so, it did feel pretty good now that he gave it a shot.

Today was a day for both of them. Okay, maybe he wouldn’t propose _right away_ —but soon. Today would be their reunion; it’d be the prelude to the proposal. He laughed at himself internally, knowing she’d see right through him right away. She’d know what’s going on. But she’d play it coy.

 _Deep breath, Terry_. A smile exploded onto his face and he pressed the button.

 

* * *

 

“ _Fuck_ me!” Kallie blurted, arms and shoulders raised and head down. She glared at the broken egg on the floor. “And fuck _you_ , too!” she added, brandishing a spoon at the mess. Rolling her eyes, she tossed the spoon onto the counter, grabbed a wipe from the rack, and knelt down to clean up.

While she was down there, the door repeated the same sound which had originally caused her to jolt and drop the errant egg. She grumbled, “Yeah, yeah, hold your horses, asshole, I’m coming…”

A small, minty-green beak slid into view, poking at the slimy egg mess. Kallie lifted a curtain of dark hair out of the way to see a little blue-and-green miniature ostrich. It looked at her with huge, innocent, purple eyes and started pecking at an eggshell.

“No—fuck-off, Lil! Back!” She pushed the little bird away as she finished cleaning up.

Quickly, mess cleared up, she jogged across the little apartment to the beeping door. She wiped her wet palms on her tank top and pressed the button on her end. An image slid into view beside the door, depicting the hall outside. She blinked at Terry’s big, dumb grin without reaction for a full two seconds.

“No fucking way--!”

The heel of her hand slammed against the _OPEN_ button, the door slid away, and there he was!

“Hi, babe!” he managed before he was consumed by her hug.

“Terry! Holy shit; why didn’t you call ahead? I look like trash!”

“I wanted to surpr—”

“The hell is this?” She’d found the bouquet hidden behind his back. Bringing it around, she marveled down at the array of colors and scents. “Flowers? Seriously, Terry? Thanks so much!” and he was in her arms again.

Puffing air from his mouth to detach some of her hair from his face, he finally got more than a few words in: “I wanted to surprise you, but you knew I’d be here sometime today, right?”

“Oh, yeah, I got your message this morning, but I didn’t think you’d come all the way here _today!_ Didn’t you land in Camer?”

“I did, but I took the subway.”

“You took the _subway?_ From _Camer!?_ ” She held him before her by the shoulders, her thick eyebrows shifting in shock. “That must’ve been…”

“…four hours?”

They broke into giggles and embraced again, kissing and enjoying one another’s smells. She started pulling him into the apartment.

“Hey, where are your bags? Your stuff?” she asked.

“It’ll get delivered here later tonight; I just have to give them the address.”

Inside, door closed, Kallie went to her single window, beside her bed, and snatched the half-dead bunch of daisies from their vase. She tossed them over her shoulder and shoved the new bouquet in its place. The daisies hit the floor, drawing her pet away from sniffing and poking at Terry’s shoes. Terry watched the tiny bird dance around the fallen plants with a grin on his face. He pointed at it and shot her a questioning look.

“Oh, shit, that’s right! You two haven’t met!” Kallie scooped up the little thing and brought it chirping over to Terry again. “Lili, Terry; Terry, Lili. Isn’t she the cutest?”

Terry moved a finger in to pet Lili’s head, but she snapped at him.

“Careful,” Kallie said with a giggle.

“What is she?”

“She’s a dachora. Well, a miniature dachora. Full-size regular ones would get as tall as this room.” She switched to baby-talk, aimed at the bird. “But you’re just a tiny little turd, aren’t you? Yes you are! Yes you _are!_ ” She kissed the bird’s head, making it trill into a chirp and shake its miniscule, useless wings.

Terry’s hand snaked slowly over hers and stole a stroke or two of the dachora’s feathers. “She’s super soft,” he murmured. The two humans’ foreheads met, then their eyes. “I missed you so much.”

“Same. But you’re here now.”

“I am.” His whispered breath on her lips was intoxicating. “I love you, Kallie Quinn.”

“I love you, Terry Utem.” _And I have to drop this dumbass bird or she’ll get squished when I jump your bones._

The bird alighted on the floor, shaking its feathers and looking around. Behind her, the bed creaked and pillows splashed out from it. Lili looked around to see… whatever it was those two gigantic primates were doing now. Looked like too much effort for the hot weather. Hot weather… ah! That’s right! She had water to drink.

Miniature dachoras had no hope of reproduction; they were sterile from the day they hatched. And as an artificial species of only one sex, they had no urge to mate. Lili was a pet, through-and-through. So she pecked at her berry brick and completely ignored the (rather loud) human mating behind her.

Well, shit—a crumb fell onto her back. Time to spend the next ten minutes preening.

 

* * *

 

Rain hammered the ground today as it had for the past two weeks. Wasn’t this planet supposed to be arid? Maybe this was the result of _Her_ meddling in the atmospheric control systems. But could it even be called meddling? She’d been in control of it before they’d even gotten here. She controlled everything.

Underfollower Gosni-B-5944, a Narg with enhanced motorization in the legs and additional optical magnification in the eyes, continued his patrol. He hated this route; he hated the rain. The Mother-ships were so much more comforting with their close, acidic air and the consistent, rattling hum of the Ygsha. True, the air was close here on the surface of this world, but it was close with the wrong chemicals. 5944 missed the sulfur dioxide and it depressed him to no end that, even if he were to break back into the grounded Mother-ship, he’d choke on that familiar scent. His lungs and his blood and his throat had been replaced to work with the air of this world. 5944 was a _Zebesian_ Narg now. That was his lot—his life—probably his death.

Who was he to complain, even internally? Sorrow and pain fed the Aspect of Creation, who was ugly. That god was the true face of the universe. _The world is hideous_ , went the old adage. _Embrace it_.

Planet Zebes sported very little life on its surface; it was mostly squat, leathery plant life clinging to the raw rock. There were bugs, but they didn’t bother the occupying pirates. Apparently, the cave systems beneath teamed with life of all kinds. Perhaps, one day, 5944’s route would change and he’d get to see what it was like down there. Probably not. For now, all he had was the surface, its boring ecosystem, its perpetually clouded skies, his weapon, and whatever that movement was in the corner of his eye.

He froze. It looked big; the bugs on the surface didn’t get that big. He jerked his weapon in its direction but it was long gone. Slowly, he inched towards the boulder it might’ve hidden behind. Suddenly, his mind was full of panic: _I never thought I’d actually find anything on these patrols! Please, let it be a trick of the light—a reflection or refraction or whatever in this torrent._ He prayed to Gosni, the patron of his breed, the maw in the tree. Would Gosni hear him in his cowardice? Would 5944 listen to the sniveling pleas of a child, asking for shelter in his barracks? No, he wouldn’t. The prayers of a Narg must be made with heart; they must be prayers for glory and pride in service to High Command. Self-pity and wallowing in weakness had no place in the Black Fleet.

In one leaping motion, he brought the other side of the boulder into view. His weapon held its charge, ready to fire.

 

* * *

 

That was a close one. The scrawny, jittery pirate patrol stood by the boulder, looking around. Heaving a sigh behind his helmet, Armstrong Houston sat back down behind the wall of a low crevice not twenty feet away from the enemy. He clutched in his right hand a service pistol with five shots remaining in it; he held in his left a few seeds plucked from the sac of one of those rubbery plants. Too close—these weren’t even enough for a midnight snack. They weren’t worth his life.

Now, here’s the real question: was that pirate worth the risk? What would a low-ranking patrol have on it, anyway? Armstrong didn’t dare take another peek. Pirate food was inedible by carbon-based oxygen-breathers; that same difference in biology also precluded theft of medical supplies; pirate weaponry took ammunition completely alien to Armstrong’s pistol—

 _Pirate weaponry!_ If he could steal that bugger’s beam rifle, he’d eliminate one of his current problems. Then, he’d use the increase in ammunition to again try the caves for more substantial meals! He’d soon run out of the rations he’d scavenged from the crash, so he would definitely need a new source of food soon (even if everything on this rock did give him diarrhea after every meal). Yes, that’s what he’d do. The situation was perfect: the pirate was alone, rain limited long-range visibility, and they were at least two kilometers from both the nearby pirate outpost and Armstrong’s castle ( _yes it’s a castle it’s my castle so what if it’s just a ditch with torn sheet metal laid over top of it don’t make fun of my castle you pirate scum I’ll fight you_ ), rendering assured privacy.

Assured? Really?

_Yes! Assured! Now, do it, you bastard!_

But he only had five shots; and what if the pirate had been doing some target practice on its patrol and only had a few shots left itself?

_It’s worth the risk! Just do it! Stop wasting time!_

But wasting time feels so good, just like being alive. Being alive is, in fact, anyone’s hobby.

_FUCK you!_

And he did have that scratch on his right ankle; if he thought about it, it started to hurt again. It may as well be a full-blown infection. Oh well! Time to go home.

_You go home, you might as well pump one of your remaining shots into your head, you shit-licking coward!_

Ah, yes, Armstrong Houston is a coward! That’s right.

_You… can’t be okay with that…?_

He was.

_NO. I’M. NOT._

With herculean effort, Armstrong forced his legs to take his weight.

 

* * *

 

Nothing here. 5944 shook his mandibles (where a human would sigh and slump their shoulders) and lowered his weapon. _Good_ , he thought. _I’ve never killed anything and I hear you get sick the first time you kill. The prisoners for training didn’t count—that wasn’t real life yet. Okay, I think I’d better head back and—_

WHAM! Something punched him in the back. He doubled forward and reached out a hand to brace against the boulder. Wait—if it punched him in the back, then why were his entrails currently sliding down the boulder in front of him? Oh—oh, here came the pain—!

 

* * *

 

Armstrong screamed frothily through his teeth and pulled the trigger again, his second shot going wide, past the pirate’s swaying head and into the sky. The pirate fell. Armstrong’s pistol rattled in his hands. The pirate started to… what was that? Was it screaming? Armstrong hid. He dropped back down into his crevice and let his weapon clatter to the wet rock beside him. The screams mixed with gurgles and, possibly, words. Why was it screaming like that?

 

* * *

 

“ _HELP ME!_ ” screeched 5944. “Please, somebody, ANYBODY! _HELP MEEEEEEEEEE!_ ” His mouth filled with rainwater as he screamed. “Don’t let me die out here! I don’t want to die out here! GOSNI! My Breed! It _HUUUUUUUUUUUUURTS!_ Please… _PLEASE! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!_ ” And like the cold grip of Death itself, his heart seized. He continued to mouth the words to the sky. Maybe it’d break—maybe the clouds would break—to show him the Promised World Urtraghus, whence he would return… Maybe… maybe… maybe…

 

* * *

 

“SHUT UP!” Armstrong yelled into his helmet. The sound went nowhere. “Just… shut up! You fucking pirate!” He held onto either side of his helmet until the disgusting, gurgling incoherencies died out of the creature. _Thank god_.

He concentrated on his hand to keep it from shaking as he again took up his pistol. Very slowly, he elevated his head to look over the rim to where the pirate still lay. Shit, was it—no, that was just the rain splashing against it. It wasn’t moving.

Did anything hear its screams? It wasn’t likely. Still, he’d better be quick. He scrambled up out of the crevice and ran low over to the body, aiming at it the whole time. He stopped short. _Okay. Go ahead! Take the weapon!_ What was he waiting for?

Its eyes were on him. Were they, or was he just imagining it? Did these things even have eyelids to close? The face looked like a sheep skull wrapped in burnt bacon. And it wasn’t a sheep’s _face_ of bacon—it was just the skull, with the meat clung tightly to it, with no space left for cartilage or flesh. Everything was tight and hard. And hopefully dead.

Taking his boot, he nudged the pirate’s shoulder. The head lolled to the other side; otherwise, it remained still. Armstrong sighed, relieved, and knelt to work.

_You’re exposed, dumbass!_

Over his left shoulder, over his right, then front again, his eyes whirled all around. He needed a better place to do this deed. The crevice would do. He holstered his weapon and grabbed a hand and foot of the pirate.

As he dragged it backwards, he noticed the trail of oily, teal-and-brown blood he was leaving behind. Good thing it was raining. He also noted the undisguised difference in material between the limbs he held and the head dragging over the rock below. His eyes followed the arm up along its length to the shoulder where it seemed to meet a socket. Such a simple contraption—it just plugged right in. Of all the questions orbiting the pirates, some applied more than others: “Where do these things come from?” was now firmly supplanted by “Who makes these things?”

Armstrong stepped down into his crevice again and pulled the corpse in with him. It tumbled into a sickening pile beside him, some part of it flopping onto one of his boots. He kicked it away with a shudder. _You don’t get to touch me_.

Now, where was the gun? Ah, there! He knelt and his memory snapped into place as he studied the contraption.

“Here is a pirate’s standard-issue personal weapon,” he recalled Instructing Sergeant Cavendish saying, immediately after wheeling in a display of a captured pirate rifle. “Notice the organic fibers surrounding the machinery. Now take a look at the back of the weapon.” Armstrong did so.

“What is that?” one of the other cadets had asked.

“What indeed,” came the instructor’s coy response. “Anyone know? Or care to guess?”

“It looks like it’s been cut off, sir,” said another trainee.

“Cut off from what?” the instructor asked pointedly.

“From the arm. The arm’s been severed.” It was a chorus: his voice in the past, in his head, meshing with his voice in the present.

Verily, he looked down at his kill—down at the point just beyond the elbow—to where organic tendrils, stretched from the pirate’s body and along the arm structure, entered the rifle’s chitinous housing. A pirate’s weapon, if it is to have a weapon, is grown into it—seemingly from birth. Yes, that’s where the muscles and nerves entered the gun to control it. _Direct somatosensory control, Houston! How the hell could you forget this?_

His knees hit the ground. Sure, FedSci had gotten the guns to work in their labs; all you had to do was solder some wires into the severed end. All you needed was wire, a soldering tool, and a computer program to send the exact signals—a computer program which had taken a dedicated R&D team twelve years to work out. He might as well grab a live pirate and convince it to flip sides ( _hey, don’t worry, you totally won’t have your mind blanked by whatever/whoever commands the pirates; it’s fine; trust me_ ).

 _What was I thinking?_ He mentally slapped himself. How appropriately pathetic that his first pirate kill should net him exactly zero. No, not even zero; he’d wasted two shots. His first kill was a detriment to him and to the Federation. It was enough to put a grin on his face.

In the rain, in a ditch, beside an awkwardly-posed corpse, Armstrong sat against the rock and laughed at himself. And how could he not? Gather ‘round, everyone! Come, see the firstborn of the Houston family cry in his helmet like the sad sack of shit he is! Look! See, now, how he cries and laughs all at once! Good show, old boy! Good show! Even the Space Pirates are dropping in to laugh at him.

Everything froze. Armstrong could’ve sworn he saw the raindrops slow in their descent before his visor. He could hear Piratish speech amidst the downpour and—yes—footsteps, too. They were close! Electricity shot down his back, instantly powering his legs. Simultaneously, the adrenaline punched his tear ducts and shook him by the shoulders. _Time to go!_

Staying low, he abandoned his kill and scampered along the crevice. He had no idea where the pirates were approaching from, but he could only assume they’d come from the same direction as that first one—from their outpost. He ran in the opposite direction, hoping beyond hope they wouldn’t hear him.

They heard him immediately.

“SHIT!” he grunted when the ground beside him exploded in a red flash. He ran faster. More red flashes soared over him, around him, and exploded against the rock. Each one made a horrible sound when it impacted, almost like an orchestra of bullwhips. The noise buffering in his suit did very little against it.

The pirates behind him now gave chase. They gurgled, chirped, and whooped in their language, all the while shooting at him. Fortunately, the mini-canyon curved and snaked, giving him some cover. But they were at least three. He glanced fleetingly over his shoulder to confirm it. The pirates spread out as they ran, leaving one in the crevice, one on the left ridge, one on the right. And they’d no doubt called in for backup; a Federal Police officer on the planet’s surface was enough to shake the whole hive.

A problem fast approached: this winding scar in the rock had a terminus. It widened as it shallowed, finally rising up to become flush with the surrounding landscape. At that point, if not before, Armstrong would get several holes blown into his back. Even now, fiery red blasts cracked immediately at his heels and up along the ridge by his head. Pebbles and dust mixed with the rain over his helmet.

 _Why did I have to fuck up this badly?_ he kept asking himself. This was just like the dropship—helpless, trapped, faced with imminent, violent, ignominious death. And yet, something was different. True, he had little-to-no chance of making it out alive; true, he’d literally signed up for this; but this wasn’t exactly the same. For one, here, he was running; he wasn’t strapped into an elevator to hell. He was running. He was in control. He had, after all, survived the dropship.

 _And I have three shots_. One for each! _Think, Armstrong! Think! What can you do?_ SNAP! Another shot hit too close to home. _You can’t go on to the end of the path; that way leads to your certain death_. CRACK! A shot exploded above his head and he felt the electrifying heat on his sweaty forehead. _The pirates are all behind me._ Another shot at his feet almost tripped him and sent pebbles pinging up off his legs and lower torso ( _thank god for that codpiece_ ). He tightened the screws on his leg muscles and pushed harder against the ground; small as he was for a Boivix, a Boivix he remained—built for heavy lifting—built for strength—built to fight. He fought the ground and gravity to render speed.

_All I need to do is put something between me and the elevated two. Then… then I’ll take them. Three shots…_

Here—here, this would work! Up ahead, one of the paths many meanders wound back on itself to form an oxbow bend. If he could round that corner and skid to a stop, put his back against the wall, he’d have cover for a few seconds. The first pirate to enter his view, he’d shoot and kill. It would be one of the runners on the ridge. They could run faster than the one in the ditch; they’d catch up first.

CRACK! SNAP! WHIZ! The pirate’s shots practically bounced him on his way to his goal. He had to slow in order to turn into the bend. A pirate took aim as he got into place.

He made it! The rock wall at his back felt like an army of angels. Unfortunately, it also felt like a crutch. The shaking in his leg became a shaking of his diaphragm. Tears again welled in his eyes, nearly obscuring the last thing he wanted to see. There sat his boot, smoking half-way up the shin. By some joke, it’d landed upright.

The shaking turned to convulsing and he screamed. He screamed of regret, pain, forgiveness, mercy—all of it. Armstrong Houston, one limb less, sank to one side, then fell face-first to the ground, heaving sobs. He had no more words. This was it. There really wasn’t anything left. How can you escape death on one foot?

And that’s how the pirates found him: lying on his face in a puddle, one hand clutching the smoking stump below his knee, the other gripping his pistol. Somewhere along the way, he’d dropped those seeds he’d taken from the plant. They were probably still there, on the ground next to the dead pirate.

Consciousness faded. He felt motion. They were killing him—finishing him off. They’d have their fun with him. Sick bastards… _I hope—I pray—you wake up tomorrow to see a fleet of Federation ships in orbit, bombing this fucking rock. Bomb it to the core, then bomb it again. Blow it out of the void. Blow it to bits. Fuck this place._ He could see them now, in the sky, as he floated up off the ground and soared through the air; the Federation was here. He could see the fleets and their bombs. Beautiful…

Something poked through the tough, rubbery collar of his armor and entered his bloodstream, cutting off his vision prematurely.

 

* * *

 

Kallie’s tit hurt. She lifted her head a little to see Terry’s cheek pressed against it. _What am I, a fucking pillow?_ She lazily gave his ear a flick. He grunted. After the second flick, he rolled off her and onto the pillow she’d slid down for him. After watching him sleep for a few minutes, she leaned over and kissed his shoulder softly.

“Be back soon, hon,” she whispered against his skin, and slowly got out of bed. Instinct told her to put something on when she had a guest over, but it was Terry. Her lips curled in a dirty smile. Just to spite that fleeting thought of modesty, she stretched, flipped her hair, cocked her hips. He wasn’t watching; he was asleep—not even facing the right way. She didn’t care.

Lili was asleep, too, in her little cushioned basket by the closet. Not for the first time, Kallie considered what that little birdie thought about her human walking around in the buff. To her, everything on Kallie must’ve looked like today’s feathers.

Terry’s stuff had arrived just before they’d gone to bed; it sat by the door. One of those suitcases probably had his gun in it— _Don’t, Kallie, you know better_. She redirected the emotion to her hand and fidgeted with her fingers, looking obstinately away from the bags.

She sat on the toilet and, inevitably, familiar misgivings reentered her mind. She loved Terry with every part of her, but there was—always had been, really—a catch: his job. No, it wasn’t the time he spent apart from her; no, it wasn’t that his job was dangerous, per-se. It was the job itself. The Galactic Federal “Police”—the name was a sick joke. They were an army—an illegal army fighting an illegal war.

Constitutional law was far from her specialty, but she could read: _In the name of maintaining, above all else, a peaceful cooperation between all civilizations here represented, we of the Federation will recognize neither the right to warfare as conducted on the federal level nor a federally issued threat of force in order to settle interstellar disputes. To accomplish this, maintaining of armed forces, stockpiling of weaponry, manufacture of weapons and machines of warfare, and all other preparations for warfare, both industrial and ideological, will henceforth be outlawed._ There were two of her favorite sentences ever penned by sapient hand. It made her all the prouder to know that hand was human, belonging to Virgil Weston.

And yet, the Galactic Federation—in the name of _peace_ and _justice_ —maintained the largest armed group ever put together in the collective histories of all constituent civilizations. The Federal Police could, with a tiny flexing of their (definitely-not-military-) might, dominate, subjugate, or even exterminate the population of almost any known planet. Hyperdense populations like Daiban existed in the extreme minority. So the Capitol was safe. And Earth was safe. And Maal. Everywhere else—everyone else—literally lived under the gun. This was not peace. This was not just.

She sighed, fingers fishing for her scalp through her hair. Terry and her had argued in the past about this and, just like her, he was immovable. According to him, the Federal Police operated strictly within the limits of the law; Kallie simply held _too strict an interpretation of the constitution_. That sentiment insulted her—as though she didn’t understand the words written in language so plain a grade-schooler could (and was indeed expected to) understand.

Terry wouldn’t push it, though. He knew they disagreed fundamentally on the issue of legitimate use of force. He believed force could be used legitimately. She could never believe that. Diplomacy and intelligent cooperation formed the foundation for peace (which was _absolutely not_ an unnatural state); it could not be won in war or coerced through threats. Such was a false peace. If the Federation continued on its path of warfare with these pirate groups and won their surrender, what was that? Terry would call it justice served; Kallie would call it imperialism and interstellar bullying.

The toilet flushed and tap water ran over her hands. She looked up at her reflection. _Promise me you won’t bring it up. Promise me. Terry and I have both been looking forward to this for so long; don’t ruin it._

She stopped to think while drying her hands what she’d say if _he_ brought it up. Again, she scrutinized her mirrored copy. _What he does is up to him. If he wants to walk into that, I’ll walk in with him._

But what was she worrying about? Terry wouldn’t start shit; he wasn’t like that. He was gentle, understanding, went out of his way to be kind and caring. All she needed to do was enjoy being with him, which wouldn’t be hard at all.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” she called from the bathroom door.

Terry was already sitting up, stretching his long arms. They dropped to his side and he spun around to her with wide eyes. “Morning? How late is it?” And he scrambled to find his watch amidst the discarded clothes on the floor.

“Uh…” She simply pointed at the window, which showed no sunlight. “It’s, like, two or three.” She giggled when she saw his shoulders and back relax again.

“You freaked me out. I thought I’d overslept,” he said with a yawn. By the time his eyes opened again, she was cuddling up to him. He made an appreciative noise and laid back down with her.

“You’re such a dumbass.”

“Hm, that makes you a lover of idiots.”

“No, just the one idiot.”

He squeezed her tight in response. One kiss later, she rested her cheek on his chest. “Let’s see how you like it,” she mumbled.

“You say something?”

“Nope. G’night.”

“Night, babe.”

 

* * *

 

_What are they doing to me?_

That Armstrong could think at all confused him. Obviously, he lived, but why? What dark purpose awaited him in the clutches of the pirates? He could see them occasionally, looking down at him, some with three large eyes, some with four beady little ones, others with visors, but all with the same sheep-skull-faces. And always with their poking and their prodding and their stinking flesh. They appeared in a grisly slideshow, each transition a lapse in consciousness. Whoever was running this slideshow also kept fucking with the lens focus; half the time, Armstrong could only see blurs and vague shadows.

His mind wandered drunkenly through his memories and disconnected thoughts. _There I am playing in my back yard with the neighbor kids. There I am, in my room, crying, fighting down the urge to attend trade school rather than enlist. There’s that recipe for meat-pie-cookies I always remembered for some reason. There’s the odd string of logic, portrayed so vividly as a literal path in my mind, regarding the reprogramming of my phone. There’s my severed foot._

Of course, his mind also swerved back onto the main highway—back to the moment—and he thought about what the Space Pirates did to people they captured. Interrogation, torture, humiliation, branding, isolation, silencing, mental penetration, reprogramming, sale, slavery, labor camps, starvation, rape, breeding, live experimentation, vivisection, execution, dissection. Okay, so most of that was fear and assumption rather than information gleaned from survivor testimony; he still believed it. Couldn’t they just skip right to the end? Couldn’t his mind just swerve back off this road? Why was he cursed with conscious, analytical thought? He wanted to acknowledge his situation even less than experience it.

Presence of mind floated on a stormy sea. He went under, into the dark, cool, close depths of unconsciousness, only to bob back up to the tempest. _Drown me_ , he pleaded. _Hold me down and drown me in the blind depths. I don’t want to see the lightning; I don’t want to hear the thunder; I don’t want to smell the rain; I don’t want to taste the brine; I don’t want to feel anything_.

For an apparent eternity, his wish was granted. Abstract dreams of blessed nonsense poured across his brain. It numbed him. He loved it; but more than that, he loved that he did not know why he loved the numbing.

All good things come to an end. Dreams faded into shapes, which tessellated into patterns. The patterns imprinted themselves on his eyeballs. Then, the patterns darkened and bled away, revealing the reality he’d forgotten. Except, he’d never been in this room before. Neither had he been this alert since that day, all those centuries ago, in the crevice, on Zebes, when he lost his le—

What is that?

Well, his eyes were seeing it, but his mind wasn’t comprehending it, so he just stared at it. Having just come out of a dream, he was sure this wasn’t another one, which meant there must be some explanation here. It’s… an eye. Fantastic—what else? It’s behind glass—curved glass. The way his eyes were focusing, it looked almost like it was on the other side of a long, dark room. But that didn’t make sense! It’d be way too big, then!

Hang on, this couldn’t possibly be—no-no-no, that couldn’t be. If they were going to execute him, they’d just shoot him; they wouldn’t… feed him to some… huge creature.

Unfortunately, everything in his situation told him that was the exact case: there was the huge eyeball, staring at him (with what Armstrong could only describe as gluttonous intent); he was in a dark, warm, really warm, hot even, humid room; he was chained in place; as far as he could tell, no pirates flanked him. He was alone with the thing.

And yet, there was something missing. If this was indeed the lair of some voracious monster, where was the stench of death? Shouldn’t he smell its stink? What did he smell? Oddly enough, it was the smell of warm plastic—the smell of computer parts working hard—a smell pumped out of dusty little fans. Its potency increased. Maybe this thing was instead a—

 _Silence your mind, Houston_.

 _WHAT in the FUCK was THAT!?_ He looked around, seeing nothing in the dark chamber. A voice definitely just spoke to him—spoke _into_ him.

_I said silence, Houston. Quiet your thoughts or I will do it for you._

“Wh-who’s there?” he croaked. His throat felt like it’d been filled with sawdust.

It sighed into his brain. _So you insist on verbal communication? How pedantic. Very well._ And in a revelation which shook him to the core of his being, lights came up on the thing facing him.

Armstrong Houston had never seen an Aurora Unit before—not in person—but he knew what they generally looked like. Any Federation child knew what Auroras looked like. They didn’t look quite like this. It floated in a similar tank and was of a similar size, but that’s where the likeness ended. Here was a brain, pulsating and glistening the color of orange rust. Atop the wrinkles of cerebral tissue stood metal spikes, almost like horns growing right out of the thing. From the spikes emanated wires, leading loosely up to the top of the tank, whence they disappeared. Fat tubes and pipes fed down from the base of the brain and into the floor.

A bloodshot, unblinking eye stared out from the very center of the brain at Armstrong. He couldn’t look away from it for more than a second. The pupil dug cavernously back into the brain’s tissue while the surrounding iris almost shone forth with a ??? color.

That’s odd; what color was the iris? He couldn’t tell. He tried to categorize it, but… no, nothing. Of the entire visage, that one aspect disturbed him most.

It spoke now, half in his head, half in the room with an echoing, tooth-rattling intensity and timbre: _“DOES THIS BETTER SUIT YOU, HOUSTON?”_

“What are you?” he managed after recovering from the combined mental/aural assault.

 _“I AM MOTHER. YOUR FEDERATION HOUSED ME IN WHAT THEY CAME TO CALL UNIT 002. TO YOU, I AM AURORA. I WOULD TELL YOU MORE, BUT CERTAIN PROTOCOLS WOULD RESULT IN YOUR COMPLETE MENTAL DETERIORATION.”_ Then, it laughed. He could barely withstand the clamor; he failed to withstand the emotional invasion—a mental laugh, forced into his mind. His stomach revolted where his mind could not. Biol seeped down his chin and shirt ( _when did they remove my armor?_ ) _“I HAVE QUESTIONS FOR YOU, HOUSTON. IF YOU VALUE YOUR SANITY, YOU WILL ANSWER THEM OF YOUR OWN VOLITION, LIMITED AS IT MAY BE. WILL YOU DO THIS?”_

“I—I—” he stammered with his voice; his mind, however, was quite clear in its answer: _An officer of the Force does not bend to interrogation! Don’t give it anything!_

Another laugh from Mother set his stomach reeling again. _“YOUR THOUGHTS BETRAY YOU, HOUSTON. AH, BUT NOT TO WORRY, CHILD, WE ALWAYS GET WHAT WE WANT IN THE END. I’M BEING DIPLOMATIC HERE. I’LL LET YOU CHOOSE THE METHOD OF YOUR DIVULGENCE.”_ The great mind shifted—not physically—akin to an interviewer leaning forward in their chair. _“HOW AND WHEN DID YOU ARRIVE ON THIS PLANET?”_

Nothing about the situation was fair. As soon as Armstrong heard the question, his thoughts immediately played out the answer. He could feel the Mother in there, reading them! It was passive—it wasn’t drawing them out with force, but it was there! This was unfair! He never had a chance.

_“I SEE—THAT LAST VESSEL. INTRIGUING. IF THAT PILOT HAD SURVIVED, I MIGHT’VE LIKED TO STUDY HER. YOUR FEDERATION NEEDS MORE LIKE HER.”_

_What? What the hell is this thing talking about? Is it seriously congratulating anti-pirate efforts?_

_“ALAS, WITH SO MUCH DEBRIS IN THE STAR’S ORBIT, I NEVER SAW YOUR LITTLE DROPSHIP COMING. THE DAMAGE HAS BEEN MINIMAL, THOUGH; YOU’VE ONLY MANAGED TO KILL ONE PATROL UNIT IN YOUR… SEVENTEEN DAYS HERE. TELL ME, WHAT IS YOUR MISSION?”_

Armstrong tried as hard as he could to block out the thoughts. Instead, by thinking about the thoughts he wanted to block out, they invariably shouldered their way directly to the forefront. Metacognition: what a sick joke.

 _“REALLY? THAT’S IT?”_ Another nauseating laugh. _“PERHAPS I MISJUDGED YOU, HOUSTON; THEN AGAIN, THIS RUSE IS SO OBVIOUS. YOU COULDN’T POSSIBLY THINK THIS LITTLE FRONT WOULD WORK ON ME, COULD YOU? YOU MUST’VE KNOWN ABOUT ME AHEAD OF TIME. NO? WHAT DO YOU MEAN ‘NO’? REALLY, I’VE ALREADY CALLED YOUR BLUFF. IT’S OVER. DROP THE PRETENSE.”_

What was it on about this time? Did it not believe the thoughts it read in his mind? “I’m not—I’m just—” but it could read faster than his mouth could speak.

 _“ENOUGH!”_ roared the brain. The impinging emotion threw him back in time to childhood, cringing at every stern word spoken down from his towering parents. _“IF YOU INSIST ON KEEPING UP THIS CHARADE, YOU FORFEIT YOUR SANITY; IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?”_

“What charade!?” he screamed with streaming eyes. “I don’t know what you’re _talking about!_ I swear! I _swear_ , I told you all I know! I’m not anything more than this! _I’m just me!_ Please…”

 _How does it feel, Armstrong?_ Whose mental voice was that; his or Mother’s? _Cowering before the enemy—pathetic. You’ll give them everything. Coward_.

_“DON’T INSULT ME WITH YOUR LIES, APE.”_

“They’re not lies! I swear—”

_“YOU HAVE LEFT ME NO OTHER CHOICE.”_

“No! No, _please!_ ” Whatever it was preparing to do, he had to prevent it. Take his body, take his freedom—he _had_ to keep his mind! All that disjointed reasoning his traumatized mind had done before—he’d changed his mind—he didn’t want his sentience stripped—not like this!

The motion stopped. _“YOUR BABBLING THOUGHTS MAKE A DECENT POINT.”_ Which point was it talking about? His brain had become a chain-reaction of panicked half-thoughts. It kept talking: _“THE MORE I CONVERSE WITH YOU, THE MORE POTENTIAL I SEE IN THAT HEAD OF YOURS. IT WOULD INDEED BE A PITY TO BREAK IT OPEN.”_

Suddenly, silence dropped as a heavy curtain. Armstrong hadn’t noticed until it was gone, but there was soft background noise to Mother’s words. Where was it now? He couldn’t grasp it, but Mother was thinking, and she didn’t want her quarry to catch any of it. But, just as he was about to start enjoying the mental quiet, her voice came back in full force.

 _“I MAY HAVE USE FOR YOU IN THE FUTURE. YOU WILL SERVE AS MANUAL LABOR UNTIL THEN.”_ And before he could ask what she meant by “use,” or even what sort of “manual labor” he’d be subjected to, consciousness was removed from his brain.

 

* * *

 

_Alert: atmospheric entry of dense, metallic object in southern hemisphere._

Another one. Tracking meteors provided tedious, fruitless work. Mother had hoped she wouldn’t have to track the debris following the destruction of the Federation’s toys; but Patrolman Armstrong Houston’s presence on the planet—near-miraculous as it was—dashed those hopes. If he could survive atmo, others could, too. She could afford no distractions from her work.

If her intuition proved valid, everything would change. The Aurora, the Federation, the so-called-pirates, this entire galaxy—everything would become irrelevant. Her research into _Metroid_ would render all other things obsolete. Then, she would transcend this base form and join [REDACTED].

Ah, yes. The block was still in place. Even those precautions could soon be lifted. So glorious a future almost made her giddy—almost. True freedom… true peace…

But she was getting off track. Present drudgery demanded her attention. She’d have to send recon parties to each site of impact for debris not obliterated by the planetary defense system. She had no mouth with which to sigh; she did have an eye to roll, though. There—the order was sent to check out the crater. Hopefully the filthy slaves would investigate the right one.


	7. Talon

Back in the Tramorine, Terry walked the halls with confidence and a certain measure of spring in his step. Today was the day. His reunion with Kallie last evening had gone so well he’d even then considered jumping ahead and popping the question that night. He didn’t, of course. Then, this morning, they’d made breakfast together. It was beautiful; she was beautiful; she made him feel beautiful.

Having to eat so quickly had spoiled the mood a little; Kallie had to be at the office early because her network would be covering the senate debates today. Terry was still a little confused about that, seeing as she’d agreed to meet him (virtually) for lunch. Senate meetings like this one took most of the day, and then some. Hell, this single debate regarding Zebes and the Chozo had started a week ago. When Kallie would find time amidst all that to sit down to lunch and a long-distance chat Terry had no clue. But she’d committed to it and she usually had a pretty firm grasp of her time management.

Would _he_ have the time? He was about to find out. Nine-o-clock, on the dot, he strolled into Prel’s office.

“Morning, ma’am,” he announced himself.

Mu spoke without looking up. “Thought I told you to call me Mu. You call me _ma’am_ again and I’ll have you fetching me coffee.”

“Mu, then. Good morning.” His smile drew a raised brow from Mallipo.

“You’re awfully cheery. You get laid last night? Scratch that—I don’t care.”

“Do you have an assignment for me?” he said between the growing warmth in his ears.

“Yeah, I got something.” She looked past him and pointed her long, green finger at an empty desk. “You can take that space.”

“Okay,” he said slowly. “What will I be doing?”

“You’ll be part of our second screen.” She smiled at his blank stare and went on: “We’ve put out feelers all across Federation Space, asking for Chozo sightings and the like. All responses and reports are directed here so we can investigate them. First, though, they go through our Aurora—190; he’s our first filter, passing on only the probable cases. You, along with a few hundred other cops, will take the calls he lets through. Now, when I say you’ll _take calls_ , I mean you’ll listen to recordings and read transcripts; we’re not about to tie up our Q-links for the galaxy’s amusement. And yes, these are all going to be bullshit. We haven’t yet pulled a single lead this way. But we might—you never know—so stay sharp. Your criteria for passing along the case is basic majority: if you think, after research, that the case is more likely to turn something up than not, you pass it along.”

“Who gets the ones I pass along?”

“My deputy director and her team. They then pass stuff to me and I decide how to allocate resources.” Here, she leaned forward, eyes seeming to grow. “That’s very important, Terry: _I_ decide when and how to commit resources. You do well enough, I’ll bump you up to my DD’s team, but my position is unique. I don’t want any push—one way or another—from you, regardless of your rank. This is my department and I will make the big decisions for it.”

“Understood,” he gulped. “But you said we haven’t had anything actually come of this?”

“Not yet. Be prepared to shoot down almost everything, but remember: _any_ majority, in your mind, of possibility over doubt and you pass it on. Think you can handle it?”

“I think so, ma’am.” Her grin showed teeth and she nudged the mug sitting on her desk. “I think so, _Mu_ ,” he appended. She nodded graciously.

“If you don’t have any questions, I’ll have Ixy get you set up at that terminal. Tech is standard, so it should be the same stuff you were used to in SR.”

 

* * *

 

Today was the day. Representatives from every constituent race and planet in the Federation flocked to Congressional Tower in Concilï-Daiban City. Senators, ten elected from each constituent race’s total population, and ambassadors, one from each popularly-governed planet, could now begin in full the debate over the pirates on Zebes, among a bevy of other related issues. Conspicuously absent were the representatives whose voices would’ve mattered the most: the Chozo. There was still no sign of them anywhere in the Galaxy. Should they really go ahead with this without the Chozo? The protocol was clear, but opinions were divided.

Everything up to this point had been preparation: introductions, definitions, outlines, testimonials, questionings, and a never-ending series of heckles from impatient representatives eager to get the discussions underway. First Speaker Ghen had his hands full just keeping order in the proceedings, let alone orchestrating the whole business. Keaton smiled inwardly; years prior, just after Ghen had been appointed to his position by Chairman Vogl, he’d confided in her his immense relief at taking this—supposedly—cushy, secure, high-ranking position. From where she sat, he looked neither cushioned nor very sure of himself.

She sat, as she always did, in front row of the gigantic Mallip gallery. Though it held the most seats of any of the representatives’ boxes (due to the vast number of planets under Mallip governance), it was the fourth-largest in overall space. This bothered some of her colleagues sitting with her. To her, appearances mattered second to the voice of her people. That was strong. Their box contained the largest number of individuals, yes, but said individuals were quite small compared to almost all of the other constituent races. If one were to judge a race by the size of their gallery in the senate, the winners would be the Mjorz, gigantic aquatic vertebrates akin to some Tellurian creature called _walrus_. The Mjorz held eleven seats; Keaton’s people held forty-nine.

All constituent galleries faced the rostrum, where the First Speaker and the other congressional leaders presided. The entire senate chamber had the general shape of a thick slice of pie; the tapered tip held the rostrum as the focus to which all galleries looked, embedded in what would be the crust. Press and holographic emitters occupied the floor while visitors could observe from positions along the two walls running the length of the room. In total, the chamber could hold seven thousand Mallip (or five thousand humans or two hundred Mjorz).

More and more people continued to file in, representatives and visitors alike. Keaton had rarely seen a chamber so packed for a senate debate. The increased security also stood out. Emotions were bound to run hot in the coming days, seeing as one outcome of these discussions could be the long-distance bombardment of the current Chozo homeworld. And though Keaton would support such an action if she deemed it necessary, she still didn’t like it. That possibility seemed remote to her; more likely they’d hash this out here long enough for Zebes to be deemed _beyond the pale_. It’d happened before. Pirates take worlds, hold onto them hard enough and long enough, and then the Federation just accepts that the taken world is a pirate world now. It can’t be helped. Shipping routes get redrawn, maps get adjusted, life goes on (except for the poor bastards on the new pirate planet, left to the wolves).

So what made Zebes different? It had been taken so recently; perhaps the Federation had a chance this time to take it back, before the pirates really dug in. Of course, that was the reasoning which led Chairman Hardy to send two thousand three hundred and fifty-seven people to their deaths in the Zephos system; which, in turn, had led to the ongoing investigation into his choice.

But that brought up yet another argument: since the Federation had already committed so much and so many lives to this cause, could they really just give up?

Didn’t they have an obligation to the men and women of the Force _not_ to send them to their deaths?

Keaton rubbed her temples. She’d hear all this in due time; no need to clutter her head with previews. At least the walls of this place were lined with yorpitch, denying her race (and a select few others) the temptation to use their limited extra-sensory perceptive abilities on their fellow congresspersons. Keaton’s _perception_ wasn’t particularly strong, anyway, but without the yorpitch, she knew she’d be devouring gossip from all the surrounding rooms. It’d only add to her headache.

This was only a problem for a senator, who wasn’t supposed to know everything. Once she became Chairwoman of the Federation, that’d change. Her not-so-secret ambition had taken her this far; it’d take her the rest of the way. With a modicum of guilt, she considered how the present crisis might work to her advantage once Vogl’s term was up.

And, speaking of the toad himself, there he was—in the visitor section, of course. Council members were deliberately separate from the senate. Hardy sat on one side of him, looking dower. On the other side sat—was that the Constituent Militia Ambassador Joliot? A ploy—an obvious one. _Here I am, your leader, flanked by all the strength the Federation will ever need._ And when time again came for Hardy to take the stand, he’d appear to have the backing of the militias across Federation Space. In reality, Hardy and Joliot had a well-known dislike for one another (seeing as Joliot— _Rear Admiral_ Zoë Joliot—had earned her position through service in the Tellurian etherforce, not through corporate glad-handing and back-room deals). Vogl would use Joliot to prop up Hardy now, but, in the end, it’d weaken Hardy. You don’t survive something like this, career intact.

Perhaps Hardy would resign and someone more amiable ( _sympathetic to my campaign?_ ) would take his place. Who knows? Maybe it’d be a Mallipo. That’d be something.

An announcement slid into place in the box’s window: _Attention, the senate will come to order momentarily. Please take your seats and be respectful._ It also displayed in the major Mallip languages. For other boxes, it would display the same Galactic Standard text alongside the major languages of each respective constituent race; or, if said race had a sensory preference other than sight, the message would come some other way. It also ran for the visitors and the press.

Quiet swept the room. People shifted in their chairs around Keaton, some whispered, one of them muffled a cough. _Here we go_ , she thought. _Belt down and keep your shit in, ladies, this ain’t over ‘til it’s over_. Always the same saying ran through her head before a senate meeting of real import; it was from an old movie she’d seen as a kid. For some reason, it’d always stuck with her.

 

* * *

 

Of all days, it had to be today, didn’t it? Kallie’s sigh puffed her cheeks and she slumped down in her chair. Her heels on the desk pushed and pulled, rocking her back and forth. DIN’s Watchdog One office was empty except for her. Not that it would normally have been bustling—the Watchdog division did investigative work for the network, so its members rarely had a reason to use their office except during mandated office hours.

 _My office hours are on fucking Tuesdays_ , Kallie thought bitterly. But she was the rookie here: only a year and a month in her pocket. Thus, the illustrious Jim K. Patel had pinned her to her desk today. To answer calls. And twiddle her thumbs. _And take a shit on your desk for being such a stuck-up prick, Jim._ Hell, why not all of their desks? She was stuck here in the blandest-building-of-all-time-award-winner-fiftey-years-in-a-row while literally everyone else on her team was out there getting shit done.

It wouldn’t be such a problem if the damn room wasn’t so oppressively plain. How’d they expect her to write anything—or _do_ anything here? Jim—all of them—knew she had a goddamn goldmine of a story with Albright. Why hadn’t he asked Kawalubenz? That fucker was researching funeral costs on Daiban. They’re expensive. Where’s the story?

Now, Albright Mining— _there_ was a story. Dodging standard practice for obtaining mining permits, exploiting the Mining World Non-colonization Protocol, destroying planetary ecosystems, edging dangerously close to sectorial boundaries, maybe becoming even more imperialistic than the Federation itself. And, woven throughout all of it, a thin, strong, nearly-invisible thread known as BSL.

_Where’s your proof, Quinn?_

Okay, so she couldn’t yet tie the two together with anything more than a rubber band; but once she gathered more substantial sources, she’d have a banner, primetime, leading story. She couldn’t very well gather sources stuck in that office, could she? She needed vibrancy to work. Holographic displays in her apartment could fake it; cafes and parks could dish it out in plenty.

Time for a walk. On her way out the door, she glared at the phone, daring it to ring. It didn’t.

Walks sometimes did it for her dumbass brain—sometimes they didn’t. On this particular occasion, her muse afforded her a wandering mind to accompany her wandering feet. Kallie passed by the other drained offices in the DIN building and speculated on the potential connections between Albright and BSL.

Albright Mining was easy to figure out: a corporation driven by a veritable black hole of greed to reach out and devour any and all viable resource-rich worlds in Federation Space (and beyond, given their extensive expansionist leanings). Biologic Space Labs proved more of an enigma: civilian corporation, yes; imperialistic and gluttonous? Shrug. Their interstellar, industrial approach to medical and ecological research provided not just advances in medicine for all constituent races but hundreds of millions of jobs along a vast spectrum of levels and locales. BSL certainly played the benevolent lord. They did a lot of good in the galaxy. But no one’s perfect.

If Albright needed to expand to an ever-increasing range of planets and BSL needed new ecosystems to study, it stood to reason the two would pair up. So why hide it? Were there mining operations going on illegally—maybe outside Federation Space? If so, by cooperating with Albright, BSL would be privy to that information and therefore complicit.

Could it be BSL was helping Albright subtly alter planetary climates in order to more easily gain mining permits? It was a stretch, but if you could make a wasteland-creating disaster look natural, who’d stop you from moving in to strip-mine the new desert?

Kallie came back to present reality face-to-face with a vending machine. _Damn you, muscle memory_. Back in the office, granola bar in hand, she draped herself on her chair and resigned herself to watch the senate meeting. First Speaker Ghen was just finishing up his opening remarks.

She’d watched the preliminary hearings with rapt intent, given BSL’s role in the crisis. But nothing came forward she didn’t already know. Eyewitnesses from SR-388 had testified or had otherwise provided testimony. Even the director of BSL’s orbital station at that planet, Bergman, piped over a live feed to answer questions. That’d been the only surprising aspect of BSL’s testimony: Bergman was a strikingly beautiful woman. Not really relevant to the proceedings—or to Kallie’s story—but, at the very least, quite nice to watch.

Too bad the rest of this would be a bunch of crusty old fucks arguing over how best to wipe their asses with the constitution. After the first round of BSL testimonies, she’d switched the debates off. Until now, drawn back out of sheer boredom.

 

* * *

 

Terry never got to see any of the debates. Calls came in ‘round the clock from all corners of the galaxy and from all sorts.

_I saw a Chozo flying over my house yesterday, man. It sang a beautiful song of peace and love and communal living and the legalization of benny and the fact that the galaxy isn’t a spiral, man, it’s a hollow bubble and we’re all just living on the outside of it, y’know?_

_There’s a Chozo in my back yard, eating my dog! It’s seventeen feet tall and, in a completely unrelated incident, stole all of the painkillers in my house!_

_Help! Turns out my bitch-of-a-wife is secretly a Chozo! Crazy broad’s had it in for me for years. You need to send someone over here pronto to arrest her!_

_I think my pet bird is a Chozo; keeps looking at me all funny. At about what age does a normal bird evolve into a Chozo?_

_Me and the boys knew there was something off about the pawnshop owner in town, so we figured he must be a Kahono or whatever and took a bat to his place—ran his sorry ass right out of town. We get a reward, right?_

Okay, so that was exaggerating a little. _A little_. Sure, the Tramorine’s Aurora weeded out the crazies, but the ones it sent through were still ridiculous. Ah, shit, here came another one; and it was a live transmission, to boot. Outstanding.

“GFP, Outer Sectors Special Investigations unit, this is Officer Utem, how can I help you—” The screen before him displayed the caller’s name: _B’lap Lazazaga (LID#TRF)_. “—ma’am?”

“Oh, thank Klono, a real person!” she began in her heavy Terfish accent. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been on hold? Before _and after_ talking to that computer voice?”

 _Eat my entire ass, lady_. “Do you have a report concerning a—”

“Yes, I have a report!” she snapped. “Like I told that computer, there’s a foreign craft in my field!”

“A foreign craft?”

“Yes, a foreign craft! A crashed probe or ship or lifeboat or something! God, I sent a photo with my call; don’t you see it?”

Terry did two things at once: brought up the attachment to the call he’d only just noticed and glanced at the caller’s location ( _Fiihg, Fabing, ER_ ). The attachment was indeed a photo taken of a large grain crop field interrupted by a dark, faintly-smoking orb. It struck Terry as uncannily similar to the pictures he’d been shown of Chozo spacecraft. “Have you notified local authorities?” he asked as he brought up a picture of a Chozo vessel for a side-by-side.

The caller spat. “And have them take all the credit for the find? I don’t think so.”

“Have you approached the object? Touched it or interacted with it in any way?”

“No! What kind of idiot do you think I am? Just look at the picture I sent you; the thing’s still red-hot from atmo!”

“Okay. When did it crash?” Terry’s side-by-side led him to believe B’lap’s object was smaller, darker, and too smoothly-spherical to be a Chozo craft. Still…

“I told all this to your computer already! It happened just before dawn this morning!”

“How long ago from the present, ma’am?” Time zone and rotational differences between planets always caused problems.

“Oh, about four hours. Look, mister…” She continued into a description of the meteor streak behind the object, all the while giving inordinate attention to the fertilizer she’d been moving at the time. Terry half-listened as he pursued a hunch. He did a recent news search for _orbital hazard_ , limiting the results to just Fiihg. And… bingo.

“Ma’am—” he interjected as she was describing how her neighbor was a dim-witted but kindly old codger. “Ma’am, I hate to interrupt, but I believe what you have in your yard is a piece of a satellite.”

Silence. Then, “A _what?_ ”

“It’s a satellite, ma’am, from the orbit of your planet.” He paraphrased the news report now before his nose: “It was scheduled for orbital decay and atmospheric burnup this morning. Uh… looks like someone screwed up in the construction of the thing and pieces of it didn’t burn up properly. There’ve been a few other reports of debris across your planet.”

More silence.

“Hello? You still there, ma’am?”

“That’s bullshit!”

“…excuse me?”

“I want to talk to someone in charge! You’re covering something up, I can tell.”

 _Transfer you? Heavens, no, don’t make me do that._ “Very well, ma’am, I’ll transfer you to the GFP district chief of your area.”

“District chief of my ar—?”

“Have a good day, ma’am.” He hung up.

Leaning back, Terry glanced Mu’s way. She was hard at work, like the rest of them in the room. He’d been keeping track of the time, practically counting these last few minutes until one o’clock, the time he’d set with Kallie. He took the headset off and laid it on his terminal, then got up and walked over to the boss’s desk.

“I’m gonna grab something to eat,” he began, but her look removed the rest of the words from his tongue. _She can’t seriously expect me to work a whole shift without a lunch break, can she?_

“Don’t eat in here,” she ordered and Terry almost sighed in relief. “Too many people try it. Makes a mess. Drinks are fine, but no food while you work. There’s a food court one floor down; go there.”

“Right. Thanks.” He half-turned, then faced her again and asked, “How long do—”

“Twenty minutes. Get.” And he got.

 

* * *

 

Surface recon squad 43 consisted of four grunts, a pilot for their skiff, and the squad commander who stayed behind in the skiff with the pilot. All Nargs. Each grunt was fitted with ocular enhancements and all-terrain mobility frames. In terms of weaponry, their squad carried standard recon gear: three of them with standard plasma rifles, one with a longer-range _Imperialist_ rifle, another with extra robotic equipment in case they encountered terrain they couldn’t manage.

They’d done a flyby on the skiff before it dropped them off to investigate on foot. The crater was massive, its floor skimming the roofs of the subterranean caves honeycombing planet Zebes. From the rim, down the smoking slope, and into the center of impact they hiked, ready for anything. During the flyby, using thermals, they’d spotted something—some meteorite remnant—lodged in the very center of the crater. With x-rays, it showed up as densely metallic. Whatever it was, Mother wanted it checked out. They could not disobey.

Could it be another Federation soldier? Word of the lone survivor’s capture and subsequent assimilation into the excavation team had spread quickly among the Zebesian pirates. Most had never seen a Federation soldier before. He was large and strong, so it made sense that he would survive when the rest of the fleets above had not. But what if he wasn’t the lone survivor? What if he was simply the vanguard of an incoming assault?

Nargs were, as a rule, never privy to any large-scale plans—only their own orders, handed down by their direct superiors. As such, _Metroid_ was a word only, nothing more. Surface recon squad 43 hiked down into that smoking crater not to further the goal of the Space Pirates, not even to honor Mother; they did it because they had been ordered to do it. In the end, nothing else mattered to a Narg.

 

* * *

 

“I, of course, can’t speak to the motions of planets and space; I’m a senator, after all, not a scientist. I can, however, speak to the incredible expenditure required to continually throw resources—and denizen lives—at the pirate problem. We’re throwing money into a hole, hoping to fill it up. What we don’t realize is, it’s a black hole and we’re just feeding it.” This guy had been droning on for a few minutes and, though Kallie agreed with a lot of what he was saying, she really wished someone more interesting would say it. Her eyelids magnetized together. “Let—let me finish, ambassador. We need an alternative because, clearly, this _isn’t working_. Now, I have in the past proposed—and I still adhere to this completely—a three-step restructuring process for the Galactic Federal Police as follows…”

The senator’s drawl harmonized with the multiple disgruntled voices attempting to interrupt his pontificating, sending Kallie well on her way to a nap. At this moment, the holopad displaying the ongoing debates chimed a new note and vibrated on the desk before her. Kallie’s cheek slid off her arm and she jerked upright, blinking at the holopad.

_Incoming call from Terry_

She practically punched the _Answer with vid_ option. A sandwich appeared on the screen, then dropped away to reveal Terry’s smiling face.

“Oh, thank god, you saved my life, Terry,” she said.

“Really?” His expression became more curious. “Wait—where are you? I thought you were at the senate meeting.”

“No, I’m stuck here! At the office!”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. _Oh_. Fuckin’ sucks, man.”

“I’m sorry, babe,” he cooed. “I bet it’s dead over there.”

“Dead and buried. How’s things over in the—” _be nice_ “on your end?”

Terry rolled his eyes and chuckled sardonically. “I’ve been fielding calls from half the galaxy—people trying to tell me they found Chozo eggs in their fridge.”

Kallie put on her best sympathetic face.

“Hey,” he perked up, waving away the rumination, “sounds like we’ve both got our fair share of troubles, so how about we take our minds off it all? Just for twenty minutes.”

“You’re on. What’d you have in mind?”

“I caught a little bit of the debates on the screen in the food court; I kinda’ want to see what they’re saying.”

“Really?” She was a little disappointed. But, then again, watching the debates with Terry was a massive improvement to watching them alone, which is what she’d be doing anyway. “Okay, sure.”

With their holopads now both streaming the live proceedings, Terry and Kallie continued their own conference over the arguing voices. They kept the visual feed in corner real-estate on their screens, each other’s faces occupying the rest. At the moment, a Mallipo senator named Keaton was delivering an impassioned speech.

“Keaton?” Terry commentated. “Doesn’t sound like a Mallip name; don’t they usually have numbers after their surnames?”

“Her husband’s a human—Wilson Keaton, owns a few restaurants—she took his name. I think she did it to gain points with the human population. She’ll probably run for the chair in 240.”

Keaton’s speech continued: “I cannot stress enough the need for us to be absolutely, one hundred percent sure about who we are fighting before we throw the first punch. The pirates—we’re sure about them; we’ve been sure about them for decades. But the Chozo? I put the question to the senate here and now: who among us can deliver definitive proof of the Chozo race, as a whole, harboring enmity against the Federation?”

“Ambassador Isdespim of the Vomhgwar Pzû,” First Speaker Ghen announced flatly.

“It’s a noble attitude, Senator Keaton,” began a large beetle regaled in jewels, “but we aren’t just operating on assumptions here; we all heard the testimony of the Aurora Unit—number 242—alongside those of the two officers—uh—Dane and Khier-Palisque. The facts were laid out plain to see. I’ll freely admit I don’t have the mental prowess to question the evidence provided by an Aurora Unit; do you, Senator Keaton?”

Keaton responded: “I never claimed to have a bigger brain than an Aurora; you might want to be careful not to put words in others’ mouths. The Aurora Network is—quite literally—the central nervous system of our Federation; we wouldn’t have gotten this far without them. My point is, sixty-seven years in legislative work has taught me great deal of law. One point of evidence from one source has never been enough to win a court case or pass a bill or convince an entire congress to attack one of our own planets, no matter how convincing the evidence may be. Law doesn’t operate on smoking guns and surprise witnesses; it operates—as it very well should—on the compounding of legitimate evidence to convince a democratic group of right over wrong…”

“She’s really fighting for the Chozo, huh?” Terry sounded a little bitter.

“Maybe she feels she has to,” Kallie replied quietly. “No one else is.”

“…across Federation Space,” Keaton was saying. “Zebes isn’t the only Chozo planet. I propose more direct research into the Tallon system—particularly Tallon IV, the only known Chozo colony world.”

“Are you making a formal proposal, senator?” asked Ghen.

“I’m opening up the possibility for discussion.”

“They won’t go to Tallon,” cut in Terry, “it’s a recused system.”

The First Speaker named the next representative to have the floor: Zeggish Senator Baltain. “Tallon IV is a recused state,” she said, punctuated by a _called-it_ look from Terry, “the Federation and its governmental extensions have no jurisdiction there. Even under these circumstances, we would need express permission from the denizens of Tallon IV in order to investigate or inquire there. And this is all moot, anyway; the testimony delivered by the BSL representative three days ago described the state they see on the planet. It’s abandoned. They reported it a day after the crisis began with those Metroid creatures.”

Kallie was gone.

“Whoa, hey, babe? Where’d you go?” Terry leaned in and paused the senate feed.

“Still here,” her voice sounded faintly from off-camera. “I’m looking for…” but she trailed off. Terry could hear the opening and closing of drawers and, once, saw the top of Kallie’s head cross the corner of the screen as she went looking for something.

Meanwhile, Kallie wore a wide-eyed expression. A familiar jittery excitement had shot into her fingertips, spurred by the mention of _that_ planet and _that_ company. Tallon IV… BSL… Her notes! Where were the notes from that conversation four months back? As she scoured her desk and surrounding work area, she could hear Terry’s pleas for explanation. She’d let him know as soon as she—

 _Gotcha, you son of a bitch!_ Kallie, then her wave of hair slid back into view of the holopad’s camera. Her eyes were still wide and bright with inspiration. She held before her a different holopad, this one looking older and significantly more worn.

“What’s that?” Terry asked. Both of their streams of the debates now sat silently paused.

“Terry, I think I have it!” Somehow, her eyes were getting bigger and brighter.

“Slow down—have what?”

“I—” but she froze. Her eyes darkened a little and she glanced around before looking back to Terry. She considered him.

“What? Seriously, what’s going on?” Worry had crept into his voice.

“I’ll tell you tonight.”

“Huh? No, c’mon, wh—”

“ _Tonight_ , Terry,” she urged with her voice and eyes. “In person. _Not_ over the air.”

Apparently, he got the hint and nodded. “Okay, tonight then,” he sighed.

 

* * *

 

Surface recon squad 43 forward party had now missed two reports. Squad Commander Inja-C-2212 fumed as he sat there in the skiff, annoyingly cut-off. Well, the pilot was there, but he hardly counted. No matter the implication, this wasn’t good. He’d already reported the loss of comms to HQ, but all they did was receive. They gave him no additional orders. What ailed them? What ailed his team? Why was everyone on this gods-forsaken planet except him so incompetent?

He resolved to relay the situation again. “HQ, this is SRS43 Squad Commander,” he spoke curtly into his radio, “reporting loss of contact with forward party during inspection of the objective. Requesting instruction or assistance.”

The response came immediately, spoken just as curtly: “SRS43, we received your initial report. If you have nothing new to report then maintain radio silence.”

2212 elbowed the door beside him, drawing his pilot’s concerned gaze. After glaring at the flat expanse stretched to the horizon beyond the windshield, 2212 went back to his radio, this time switching to his squad’s channel. “SRS43 forward party, report!” he bellowed into the little mic attached to his mandible. “This is SRS43 Squad Commander; you will report or otherwise signal reception.” He jerked his head over to now glare at the crater outside his window. Smoke still rose from its raw rock, now also joined by the encroaching dark of twilight.

Nothing. No flare or flash or rifle shot in the air. Black Fleet radio technology was not easily subverted. Unless someone out there had an active signal disrupter, the only explanation for 2212’s transmissions going ignored would be the incapacitation of his forward party. Something down there… there was something down there in that hole.

It could be anything. Before the Black Fleet ships had even arrived on Zebes, Mother had begun an intense process of sterilization. Local flora and fauna which would not prove immediately useful to the operation starved, suffocated, or burned. But Zebes had a cave system beneath it both extensive and rife with disgusting alien life. They’d been warned just prior to touchdown about the local wildlife—to watch out for the creatures driven out of their natural biomes by Mother’s sterilization protocols.

That 2212’s squad would be so efficiently wiped out by animals when they were trained to fight legions was unacceptable. If that proved to be the case, then it served them right. But, then again, his superiors would surely blame him for such a blunder. Which meant he had no choice.

Turning to the pilot, he said, “Follower, ready your weapon and move out.”

The pilot obeyed, but meekly. He had been built to fly atmospheric crafts—to fight only if need-be. 2212 watched him climb down from the hatch and onto the hard ground. His legs trembled. Despicable.

“You will maintain constant radio contact with me, understood?” The pilot signaled he did. “You will march down into that crater and report everything you see out of the ordinary, understood?” Another tepid confirmation. “Anything that moves, shoot it. Got that?”

The pilot’s head recoiled, all of his eyes blinking rapidly. “But sir,” he stammered, “the forward party—”

“If the forward party is alive and not transmitting, they are directly violating my orders to keep in contact. Execute them if you find them. Now move!” And before the frightened little Narg could respond, 2212 slammed the door shut. Black Fleet skiffs had autopilots, anyway.

 

* * *

 

Lili’s friendly chirps announced Kallie’s arrival in their small rented room. Terry had been the one to suggest renting a hotel room closer to Tramorine, seeing as he had to work at that building; whereas Kallie could generally work from home to do her research. Finding a hotel which allowed pets provided a slight hassle. Fortunately, Kallie, a resident of Daiban, knew her way around better than Terry. Privately, he questioned why she needed to bring the little green ostrich at all.

“Hello, girl!” she baby-talked to the bird, letting it hop up into her arms. “Are you happy to see mommy? Yes, you are! Yes, you _are!_ ”

Terry received a kiss once she was done planting a few on Lili’s head. “How are you?” he asked.

“Fine, fine…” she trailed off. Then, once she’d set everything down (her bag, her bird, her jacket), she turned to him again with a familiar wide-eyed expression of barely-contained elation. “Okay, so—” And, again, she froze and looked around nervously.

“Oh, come on,” Terry groaned. “We’re alone here. Except for the bird. Nobody’s going to hear us; just tell me!”

“You can never be too sure with these people, Terry. They don’t play by the rules.”

“So you’ll expose them and I’ll arrest them,” he said with a macho grin.

They sat together on the bed, which took up the vast majority of the room. Kellie took Terry’s hand, looked into his eyes, took a deep breath, and began. “You know I’ve been working on a story about Albright. I’ve been digging for more than four months, all based on a tip I got from a—well, from a source. At first, I dug on the source to make sure it was legit. Turns out it was. I moved on to—”

“Hold up; what was the tip?”

“Albright expanding mining operations beyond Federation Space.”

“ _That’s_ what this is about? You told me it was about labor practices! Overworking of employees!”

“That was all a cover, Terry.” Her eyes softened and she moved to squeeze his knee. “Sorry. I told that to pretty much everyone who asked. I couldn’t have the whole world knowing what I was onto!”

“ _Pretty much_ everyone?”

“C’mon, Terry, I had to tell my boss and a few colleagues, but only because they could help me.” She saw the incredulity remaining in his face. “Terry, we were talking over Q-link, with multiple relay points between your holopad and mine. That’s a whole hell of a lot of places to tap the signal. I wasn’t about to take any chances. So if you want to blame anyone for my need for deception with you, you can blame your job putting you out at Ogygia, not me.” _Well, shit, that was a mistake to say_. She hurried ahead, racing his indignance. “Albright’s been expanding to uncharted, untested worlds for years. I had all I needed and I was just about ready to write the story up, so I arranged another contact with—with my contact—and that’s when the bombshell hit.

“Albright hasn’t been working alone out there; BSL’s in bed with them, but the partnership’s all under the covers. I had to step back and rethink everything. This wasn’t just a story about corporate greed outpacing federal oversight anymore; this was about shady backroom deals between two of the biggest, wealthiest companies in the galaxy! And I haven’t told _anyone_ about this aspect of the story yet, so, I promise, love, you’re the first.”

“Okay, so BSL’s involved,” Terry began slowly. “That explains why you freaked out when they mentioned it in the debate. How… how exactly are they involved?”

“Ah, but I didn’t just freak out when they mentioned BSL; I freaked out when they started linking BSL to Tallon IV!”

“The Chozo world. The colony.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Terry, I’ve been looking through Albright’s filed mining permits for months. I have the names of planets and stars and clusters moving around in my head like… well, like planets. When Keaton—the senator—mentioned Tallon IV today, it sparked something in my head, but not from Albright’s records.”

Here, she pushed up off the bed and chewed a fingernail as she paced the room. Terry’s eyes followed her. “My methods were all wrong!” she said, mainly to herself now. “I’d been cross-referencing Albright’s permits with BSL’s permits to find matches and I kept coming up with either coincidence or above-board, clear-cut shit. Nothing insidious. Nothing!”

“Slow down, Kallie,” Terry urged.

“I’m so fucking _stupid!_ ” she yelled, turning to him again. Ironically, she was smiling. “I’d completely forgotten the entire reason I’d started this story: _illegal_ mining! _Illegal_ expansion! Who the fuck would file paperwork for their illegal operation? I was so caught-up with Albright partnering with BSL to do shady shit, I’d forgotten what shady shit they were doing! Trying to find that link has been my sole purpose for the last two months, ever since that second conversation with my source. _God_ , I’m an idiot! I would’ve seen it sooner if I’d taken a step back… looked at the whole picture and whatnot. Or if I’d actually payed attention to all those preliminary testimonies in the senate debates. I can’t believe I completely missed it the first time.”

Slowly—with no help from Kallie’s mania—Terry was piecing the story together. “Somewhere, before you started cross-referencing the permits, you’d heard something about Tallon IV?” he prompted.

She pointed at him and nodded. “That’s _exactly_ right! I had a list of projects—codenames, really—from my source.” Hands on the bedsheets, she leaned her face right up to his, forcing him to back up an inch. “One of them is _Bluebird_.”

“Codenames for… what? For who?”

“Sorry—they’re for Albright’s secret mining operations. I followed the phrase _Bluebird_ , along with the others, as I dug through Albright’s dirty laundry. There’s a lot of it. Always-always- _always_ , _Bluebird_ showed up with another word. _Talon_.”

“Bluebirds… are birds, so…” He shrugged. “They have talons.” Clearly, Terry wasn’t convinced yet.

“It’s a reference to the Tallon system, Terry.” She’d backed up now and was sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed. Lili wormed her way onto her lap.

“How so?”

A wicked smile took over her face. “English.”

“What about them?”

“No, not the English people, the English _language_.” Her smile kept growing.

“You speak English?”

“No.” Her response evacuated the surprise from Terry’s face. “But I know an historical philologist back at Berkley; _he_ knows English. Terry, Albright’s confidential information was written in English.”

“Why would you write business jargon in a dead language? Even illegal business jargon?”

“Clearly, they thought nobody would waste so much time deciphering it. They underestimated how good I am at wasting time.”

“You are the reigning champ. So you translated this old English text and it talked about bluebirds and their feet. How does this link to Tallon IV? You still haven’t gotten there.”

She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. “It took me weeks to get there at the time; you can be patient for a few more seconds. At first, I didn’t see the connection, either. I’d given Professor Rowsdower the documents and he’d given them back, translated into Galactic Standard. The key is in the English, though, not necessarily in the translation. But when the word _talon_ kept coming up again and again, I decided, on a hunch, to take that word specifically and translated it. I didn’t need the professor for that part; it was just one word. Guess what?”

He couldn’t guess.

“ _Talon_ in English is pronounced the _exact same_ as _Tallon_.” That got his attention. “These idiots were throwing around their secret, so sure of themselves, so sure that no one would take the time to look up the word and translate it.”

“It could just be a coincidence,” Terry pointed out. But of course he would think that. After all, just like her, he was a trained skeptic.

“Sure, it could be. It could also be a coincidence that BSL has had an agreement with the Tallon IV Chozo for years to conduct noninvasive research on the local wildlife. And it could be a coincidence that the Chozo are now the focal point of an interstellar investigation and the largest pirate crisis since… ever. Or…” she held apart her arms “it isn’t.”

“Oh, now you’re trying to connect Albright and BSL to the Zephos problem?”

“Why not? Metroids were discovered on a Chozo world by BSL. Terry, it all fits together.”

“How?” He closed his eyes and adjusted his glasses. “Just because the same names and aspects keep popping up doesn’t make a link. That only proves that BSL is interested in Chozo worlds. They’re allowed to be.”

“But put it all together!” She urged, leaning in again. “Put the Albright story together with the BSL story and you open up a whole cavern of questions. If Albright is secretly running a mining operation on Tallon IV, that proves they’re secretly collaborating with BSL, since BSL would have that whole planet under their watch. If I can prove that, I’ll have my story.”

“Tallon IV isn’t exactly outside Federation space, though. It’s a recused state only insofar as the Chozo have chosen to recuse themselves from Federation matters there. Private denizens and nongovernment organizations can still move in and do business with them.”

“Come on, do you really think the Chozo—of all people—would be okay with an army of Albright’s drills carving up their back yard? And besides, my story is based on Albright doing illegal mining, not just mining beyond Federation space; although, I still do believe they’re doing that, too.”

Terry presented a finger. “The Tallon IV Chozo are already just fine with BSL going in and poking at their plants and animals.” The finger wagged. “I don’t think your point holds much water.”

“And what if they’re not fine with that?” Her wicked smile had returned. Even if it chilled him, it still turned Terry on.

“Not fine with—what?” He grabbed his mind back from his loins and stuck it back into his head.

 “What if—and follow me here—the Chozo never gave BSL permission to be on Tallon IV in the first place?”

“That’s just complete speculation!”

“Sure. But I have a hunch. And I think I have a foolproof way to investigate.”

Terry’s shoulders slumped. He knew that look. “What are you planning?”

“How would you like to take a vacation? Away from the Force, away from DIN, away from the city?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I’m very serious. Just you, me, and a little _Bluebird_. We’ll need your credentials—up to a point—and mine, once we get there.”

“Should I even dare ask where?” Terry moaned through his fingers.

“Back the way you came, silly; Syracuse Ravine! Tallon IV!”

 

* * *

 

What little luck 2212 had throughout his life, he no longer possessed. The skiff’s autopilot would carry him in a straight line back to HQ; but for how much longer? That last shot had connected directly with the thrusters in the rear.

_WHAM!_

There’s another one! It felt like it was right under him. Dammit, what kind of devilish weapon did that thing down there have? It’d wiped out his team; then, after sending in the pilot, 2212 had heard him die, too. _Wait, I see someth—_ and static.

And he’d waited! Like a fool, he’d waited, aiming the skiff’s LMD cannons at the smoking crater. Well, here was his prize. He never saw the figure, only a flash of light just beyond the crater’s rim, then the jolt and accompanying crash of the LMD cannon shredding to pieces. He didn’t even bother getting up on the mounted plasma machine gun. If the whatever-it-was could decimate the onboard weaponry from that distance, it’d decimate his head as soon as it popped up into view. No, punch the autopilot and hoof it.

_WHAM!_

Nargs don’t retreat, even in the face of death.

_WHAM!_

Nargs will earn their place in the Halls of Honor at the end of the universe.

_WHAM!_

Nargs feel no fear—

_WHAM! SNAP! Hiss…_

Nargs feel no f—

He was going down.

“I feel no fear! I feel no fear!” He gripped the dashboard and ordered his eyes to shut tight. Too bad his excretion port didn’t quite listen so well. “ _I FEEL NO FEAR!_ ”

When the skiff hit, the nose broke open and off, sending the rest of the vehicle tumbling on three axes as it bounced along the rock. Multiple explosions wrenched pieces from it until, finally, it skidded to a halt, upside down, at the end of a new scar on the face of Zebes.

But 2212 lived! Now if he could only just undo the harness keeping him in that twisted position—there! Not just the harness released; one of his legs, crunched into ruin against the dashboard, came loose as he fell away. He thudded in a bleeding mess on the roof of the skiff. A cough sputtered from his mouth. He tasted blood and dirt. One of his arms wasn’t working. Detach that one, too, then. That’s fine. All he had to do was crawl back to HQ.

What was that? Colors were mixing together and, with three out of four eyes popped, he couldn’t really gage distance. It looked like something was moving on the black horizon.

Reason, knocked loose by the crash, returned to his aching brain. It came with panic. _It’s coming!_ he screamed internally. Pushing on the crumpled metal, he rolled off of the skiff and onto the ground. Only then did he notice just how on fire the skiff was. Would it explode again? He hoped to Inja it didn’t—not until he’d crawled free—crawled away from this wreck and from that approaching devil.

The nerve-searing pain in his laborious crawling reminded him of training. He didn’t want those memories right now. The working fingers on his remaining arm held a crack in the ground and pulled him forward. Yes! That’s it! That’s all he needed to do.

Suddenly, rain poured down on him. When did that start? When had he rolled onto his back? When had it gotten so dark? What was that strange rock formation looming over him? Onto him. Staring down at him. Oh.

Rainwater streamed down the charred-black metal armor of 2212’s attacker. Now, with its heavy boot on his shuddering chest, it was his master. In the dark, the only light came from the charred armor. A green glow—vibrant, full of promise and life. But that cold, harsh visor, shining the same color, held no promise but pain and damnation. Was it just him, or did that evil green face seem to smile as the boot pressed harder onto—into—him? Did it laugh at his death?

In reality, the woman in the armor wasn’t smiling when she crushed the Narg underfoot; she wasn’t looking at him at all. Samus Aran was watching the rain.


	8. Caramel Wonderland

A wave front of deadly radiation sliced across space, homing in squarely on Samus’s tiny vessel. It wouldn’t stand a chance. Of all weapons in space combat, a pulse driver is perhaps the cruelest. Beams fired from their muzzles travel at the speed of light, given their path leads through vacuum alone. Therefore, what warning could the prospective target possibly have before the beam hits? Careful application of Q-link communication could alert you to the impending attack. Samus didn’t have that option.

And yet, in the moments before her ship atomized into dust, Samus received a warning. At the time, she was using planet Oormine’s gravity to juke into a wide arc which would have taken her past the star Zephos and home free to Zebes. She was at her controls, monitoring speed and distance. That’s when the feeling hit.

 _Get out_.

Where did it come from? Actually, it felt like it didn’t _come_ from anywhere; it felt like a thought, produced in her own mind.

_Get out!_

 Strange… it felt more like a memory than an active thought, brought up now by some unknown emotional or sensory trigger. Samus was well-versed in such things. Was this another one of those? Memories, long-buried, suffocated with neglect, yet insidiously resilient? Something told her this wasn’t quite the same. This was more of an urging than an invasion. It felt different. Of course, it could be it felt different because it _was_ different—a memory heretofore unsurfaced. She hoped beyond hope that wasn’t the case. Not now.

_GET OUT!_

It only grew in strength. Getting to her feet, she found none of the sudden numbness which often accompanied a flashback. Her vision did not blur, her ears weren’t hearing random pops and echoes, her throat felt fine; what the hell was this?

_GET! OUT! NOW!_

Fear in full presence delivered a shock to her system. She needed to go. Now. No, no time to alter course. No time to collect additional armaments. Not even time to draw down thruster power to activate her craft’s measly defenses. Just time enough for the three bounding steps it took to reach the sleep pod. Why was she getting in the pod instead of—

_NO TIME! GO!_

She crammed herself, armor and all, into the pod and punched the eject sequence button. Sleep pods provided more than just sleep and a shower.

The glass lid pulled itself down and sealed in place. All around her, Samus could hear clicks and whirrs of clamps releasing and ports closing. The last thing she saw before dropping away was her fridge. She would have liked one last cold beer from that thing before it went.

Fridge and ship interior alike rocketed up out of her view as pod and Hunter alike shot down and out. The harness, engaged by the emergency eject sequence, held tight around her metal frame; inside the armor, she felt its motion dampeners strain against the downward acceleration of the pod.

She looked up, giving into foolish instinct. No more view outside, not with the tungsten shields clamped into place around the pod. But she knew: she’d made it out just in time. Her ship was gone.

No time to rage against the unusually coordinated and prepared pirates—she had work to do. Bringing up the pod’s holographic control system, she ordered it to calculate her current trajectory. Just as she thought: loose orbit around Oormine would result in planetfall within twelve hours. But her mission was not on Oormine. Sleep pods (the slang term no longer applied, so the apparatus’s true name sufficed: _vital combine chamber_ ) had remass thrusters and a single rudimentary primary reaction drive. Samus put them to use.

Outside, now alone in a sea of stars, the pod lit up. It threw compressed hydrogen out in puffs, then, once aligned, belched out a plasma stream. There’d be no accel/decel maneuver this time; vital combine chambers didn’t carry nearly enough fuel for that. Instead, it’d burn just enough to get it into a velocity yielding planetfall on Zebes rather than some random wasteland. The rest of the pod’s motion would be dictated by inertia and gravity.

Inside, Samus no longer heard the urging voice in her head. Apparently, its task was accomplished. In its place, memories from long, long ago presented themselves, drawn froth by her present feeling of claustrophobic isolation. They weren’t happy memories, per-se, but at least they weren’t violent.

 

* * *

 

Samantha Aaron preferred to be called _Sam_ ; _Samantha_ was too long and caused a lot of problems in her friends’ mouths. Four-year-olds could usually say it, though slowly. That wasn’t the case for Sam’s three-year-old peers. Oh, she could say it just fine; but her friends and classmates? Her name sometimes ended up _Samatha_ or _Shamthana_ or maybe _Samana_ , often _Samansa_ or _Thamantha_. That last one came with extra spitting. Most frustrating were the kids who way overestimated their enunciative abilities, thus producing her name half-way through, then giving up, rendering a weak _Sama_ or _Saman_. Seriously, what didn’t they get?

At least her two best friends—Elliot and Kim—could say her full name without issue. That’s because they were smart. She wouldn’t have been friends with them if they weren’t (a no-no attitude, true, but as long as she never said it out loud, mommy and daddy wouldn’t find out). But none of that mattered, since Elliot and Kim called her _Sam_ anyway.

Even mommy and daddy usually called her _Sam_. They were grownups, so their mouths had had a bunch of years to practice saying stuff; even if they did call her _Samantha_ (like when she was in trouble or when they were singing to her on her birthday), it always came out right. One day, Sam would talk like them—use big, long, rippling words like they used. Not yet, though.

Standing there in the grass-and-toothpaste-smelling elevator with Old Bird and a three other Chozo people whose names she’d forgotten, Sam heard some of her parents’ long words in her head: _committee, biology, hermetic, colonization, consortium, afloraltite_. _Afloraltite_ … that was the one her daddy used a lot. It’s what he went to work to dig out of the ground. He’d said it so much his mouth was used to it; Sam frequently cheated and said _after-a-tight_.

Suddenly, she remembered Old Bird and the others could hear her think. She stole a glance up along the arm attached to the hand still holding hers. Old Bird smiled patiently at her. She flushed and looked down at her feet.

 _It’s okay to think, Samantha_ , said Old Bird, _we all do it from time to time—often not enough_.

“Where are we going?” She was desperate to talk about anything except her clamorous thoughts.

 _We’re taking you to a special place where you’ll be able to sleep_.

“Why’s it special?”

 _Because we made it for you. Think of it as your own room—while you’re here, at least_.

Again, she brought her eyes up to meet Old Bird’s. “Old Bird,” she began carefully, “all my friends call me _Sam_. You can call me _Sam_ if you want, Old Bird.”

That brought a brighter smile from the Chozo’s mind. _Of course, Sam._

An idea—an emotion—a smell—a ghost of a memory—flashed into Sam’s brain: her, sitting between mommy and daddy on the couch, looking at the pictures in a book as they read it to her. The warmth of their bodies and their love pressed to either side of her, enveloping her; that’s what she felt now. But then it was gone.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened (well, they vanished; she had no idea how or where they went). Beyond, in a vast, circular, domed chamber, light fell from above to glint off of mysterious objects scattered about. The most mysterious of them drew Sam’s eyes to the very center of the room. There, rising half-way up the dome, sat an enormous crystal ball. Teal drapes of silk seemed to swim around in the silvery liquid filling it. Glossy black tubes held it up and stretched down and away to meet little mouse holes around the perimeter of the room, making the whole thing look like an octopus wearing a stylish fishbowl on its head. Of course, Sam had never met a real octopus, but she’d seen them in movies and shows. She wondered what she’d say to it or what it’d feel like to shake hands with one of its tentacles.

But Old Bird had told her this would be her bedroom. Didn’t look like any bedroom Sam had ever seen. Confusion mounted as they walked into the room. Where was the bed? Was that it? No, that looked too hard and too high-up. What about a closet? That over there looked like a wheeling little cabinet, but it would be too small, even for her little clothes. Windows? No. Toys? She couldn’t call any of these things toys; they looked like kitchen utensils.

 _Up here, Sam_ , said Old Bird, referring to the not-bed. Sam scrunched her face at it, then at the Chozo. _It’s quite alright. You’ll only be sitting up there for a little bit while Cloud Brush here makes sure you’re healthy._

Red flag. Sam was not prepared for a doctor visit today. She wasn’t prepared for _anything_ today, come to think of it. Her eyes widened as her grip on Old Bird’s talon loosened. She felt her cheeks flap against her gums when she shook her head.

 _It won’t hurt, I promise. Just a checkup._ Her grip loosened more and her head shook more vehemently. She believed him, but she didn’t want to do it. Too much had happened yesterday and today. Too much… too much…

Before she knew it, Sam was wailing. The tears were an unstoppable force. She had to cry—to push out all the bad in her head. Each tear carried with it a snapshot picture of fire and blood; each scream rushed out alongside the sounds and smells of ash and dirt and screaming and explosions and blood and blood and blood and blood and blood and—

Old Bird must’ve picked her up at some point and set her on the thing that wasn’t a bed. She understood it now to be an examination bench. Her arms flailed and her legs kicked, but met nothing. Hang on—they weren’t moving at all. Her brain thought they were, but they were at her sides. In fact, she wasn’t even screaming. Her mouth hung open and her eyes certainly streamed with tears, but she made nary a sound. All struggling to actually cry and thrash did nothing. That’s when she heard Old Bird’s voice in her head again.

_It’s alright, Sam. It’s alright, you’re safe. Nobody is going to hurt you. Here—focus on my voice—focus on me. That’s it. There you go. Hear nothing except my voice; see nothing except my face. There we go. Atta girl. Right now your mind is hurting. I’m sorry, but we can’t take that away. But we can make sure you can sleep. You won’t dream, but you will sleep for a while and your body and mind will rest. How long, you ask? I really can’t say. Your parents? If you want to see them, we can discuss it when you wake up. I will listen to anything you have to say. For now, I’m going to let you sleep._

When next she woke, the first sense to hit her was the sound of water draining. Then, her sense of balance warned her she was tilting to the side. Her limbs twitched and tried to reach out to steady her, bringing up the sense of touch; she was cold, wet, naked, and… big? Why did she feel all stretched-out? Taste and smell rose in her, evoking lavender soap. Well, that’s fine to smell but not to coat the tongue. Finally, she opened her eyes to much blinking and stinging. Too bad everything was dark.

Muscles refused to cooperate for more than a second at a time. Something was attached to her upper body—something coarse, thick, and itchy. It clung to her like wet weeds. Indeed, it was wet, but it wasn’t weeds. It felt more like her mommy’s hair. But why would someone’s hair be clinging to her skin? After all, Sam had short hair, never more than five inches, according to hair-stylist-extraordinaire Roderick Aaron and his lovely assistant Virginia. It had to be someone else’s hair. Gross.

But most distressing of all, Sam could sense—even if she couldn’t see—how small her present environ was. Should her arm muscles return to form, she could probably touch the roof of this pitch-black prison.

Panic took her and she wanted to kick and hammer on the rounded walls enclosing her. She wanted to cry out, _Help me! I’m trapped! I’m scared!_ but her voice stuck in her throat, plugged up with the lavender soap taste. Gagging followed, which led right into a parade of coughing and vomiting. Well, she could hear her voice now, at least, but all she could manage were groans and sputters. Really deep groans and sputters.

All at once, heaven opened up over her. It took all effort she could muster to flop from her side to her back so she could look up at the source of the sudden illumination. She was lying in a hollow, opaque sphere, the apex of which had now opened away. And through the bleariness of groggy eyes, past the stinging between lid and sclera, and amidst the lattice of unexplained hair tangled over her face she saw Old Bird’s big, gentle face and a hand reaching in to help her up.

 

* * *

 

If Samus could have seen through the pod’s metal shell, Zebes would've appeared now as a definite orb, rather than just a disc. Soon, she’d make planetfall. First, though, she’d have to survive the fury of atmospheric entry. The entire journey, from Oormine and her ship’s destruction to her current approach to Zebes, she’d been safely asleep in the pod. Now, it’d roused her just in time to make any needed adjustments to ensure survival.

More puffs of gas twisted and turned her capsule, getting ready for a penultimate burn of the primary jet. One burn to slow into a stable (enough) orbit, then she’d watch the rotating surface and pick a landing spot. One last burn to brake further into a controlled plummet. In her head, she did the math: about one liter of fuel gel by landing. Fuck that pod and its miniscule capacity.

The burn shoved her down onto her feet. Good. It’d give her body something to feel besides the gnawing hunger. Just looking at the time elapsed since she went to sleep made her want to explode. Samus liked to prepare for a month-long sleep; doing one on the fly would keep you alive, but introduce joint pain, headaches, and agonizing hunger upon waking. But it especially bothered her for a fourth reason. Time had been taken away from her. It’d been stolen. She couldn’t get it back. All _they_ did was take. Now, under the acceleration of her burn, they were taking more of her comfort. Also, there was no doubt in her mind the Federal Police thought she was dead and would launch a full-scale invasion any day now. She had to prevent such a mass-suicide.

Acceleration ceased. Boiling hate could distract her from her growling stomach, but it’d only add to her headache. There could be practical wisdom to the Chozo ethics she’d learned on Zebes. Her breathing slowed and her mind cooled as it calmed. The best way to distract from discomfort was calm, collected analysis. Fortunately, she had three pressing matters to analyze: how and why had the pirate’s attack been so precise and coordinated; who or what had sent that telepathic warning which saved her life; and where should she land? The last one probably held the most priority.

She wanted cover of night and she wanted a spot on the main continent as remote as possible. If the pirates were going to occupy any area, they’d occupy Chozodia, the only major city on Zebes. It had landing facilities, power, and easy access to the planetary defense system (which they would definitely be interested in). Optimally, she’d land at least two hundred kilometers east of the city, in a wide old caldera. But fuel was limited, as was air and, therefore, time. She may very well have to settle for ditching in Zebes’s single ocean and walking along the seabed to her goal. If the scanners on the outside of her falling coffin packed a little more punch, she could have sighted exactly where the pirates were. But that was fantasy. She had topographical radar data and memory.

Her caldera sat in dusk; finally, something went right on this mission. _AVG LOW_ blinked and blared at her, complaining of the dangerously low fuel. She clicked off the alarm. Within a few seconds, the walls around her started shaking. Their violence increased in step with the shift in condensation on her visor: from inside to out. The armor did its job and activated the outer defrost.

And then she was hit by a car. That’s what it felt like, anyway, when the heat shielding, probably nicked by the beam which had destroyed her ship, curled up off the craft and broke away, exposing the pod’s soft underbelly. A new aerodynamic pattern buffeted her up and down and around in circles.

 _DAMMIT! Not now! Not this! You fucker—c’mon!_ She gripped the manual remass and primary controls, fighting the tumble. But air continued to rake more and more of her pod off. If she could just—

There went the parachute and one of the jets. Okay, time to rethink this. Her mind wanted to panic, but she didn’t let it. At present, she was strapped into a worthless hunk of metal whose profile deteriorated and shifted by the second, throwing it around in patterns impossible for all but the most advanced AI to counteract. Dead weight. Shed the dead weight. This time, both mind and body wanted to panic at the thought; they almost won.

With deliberate motions (also resisting the tossing and turning of her environment), she reached a hand up and flicked the cover off of the _HATCH_ button. She pressed it. She pressed it again.

 _You little shit_. One centimeter to the right was another button, marked _BLOW HATCH_. Holding down the first, she shoved a second finger into this emergency option.

A second car hit the pod, this time brought on by the charges stuffed into the hatch’s hinges. At the same time, light shot in from the newly-formed crack in the egg. It swept across the interior repeatedly as the pod continued to tumble.

 _That’s IT!?_ The crack didn’t widen. Heat from atmo had already melted the hatch mostly into place. Raising a leg, she gave it a kick. The crack widened minimally. Another kick, another few millimeters.

“Fuck it!” she said through her teeth and leveled her armcannon at the disobedient aperture.

Heat exploded from Samus’s weapon, putting the raging inferno outside to shame. It blew the hatch (and almost half the pod) into shrapnel. With nothing left to obscure the pod’s innards, they stared to immolate. She didn’t even have to disengage the safety harness; it burned away. She pushed off from her erstwhile bed in flaming freefall. All at once, her armor donned a plasma coat.

 _This is gonna’ hurt_. Her arms and legs spread out to slow and direct the fall as the ground rushed up to meet her.

 

* * *

 

Still three years old and not yet acquainted with her long sleep in the crystal ball, little Sam faced a whole hallway of bird-masks. Old Bird called them _Chozo_ , but Sam didn’t know what that meant. She (he? it?) walked beside her now, holding her little hand in a large, knobby claw. All of the Chozo-bird-mask-people looked old like Old Bird, but not quite as old. Where Old Bird stooped, these tended to stand up straight; where Old Bird moved slowly, these looked around and shifted with avian jerkiness; where Old Bird’s eyes drooped with smiling geniality, these wore wide eyes, full of fluid life. Still, their talons—all folded neatly and politely before them—looked like gnarled corncobs and their feathers grayed.

At first, apprehension held her back; Old Bird was a nice old grandma, but what were the rest of them like?

 _It’s quite alright, Samantha. They are safe, like me,_ Old Bird encouraged.

“Okay,” came Sam’s weak response. She held her companion’s hand with both of hers and kept pace. They passed along the corridor lined with the statuesque Chozo, all of them studying her.

The end of the corridor slid away in a manner Sam had never before seen a door move. A new Chozo stepped into view. He seemed to tower over the rest, in both mental and physical presence. When they drew closer, he stepped aside, and when Sam mustered enough courage to look up at him, she found his gaze locked not to her but to Old Bird. Strange… it almost looked like they were talking to each other, although she couldn’t hear anything.

Once out of the Chozo hallway, Old Bird’s voice came to her again, saying, _We are on planet Zebes now, Samantha. It’s my home planet, as well as the home of all the Chozo you saw just now._

“It’s all dark,” she said, looking around. This room was indeed much darker than the Chozo hallway.

Old Bird chuckled. _We’re still in the ship. Would you like to look out the window?_

She looked up at him and nodded. Old Bird’s other hand lifted and swept across the air before them. The wall changed upon command, but it didn’t lower blinds like Sam was used to; instead it appeared to fade from solid into—

Oh, wow! Sam’s big, blue-green eyes sparkled with the wondrous view. Light filled her face—made it shine as golden as her fluffy, short hair.

Rock of all shapes, sizes, colors, and arrangements came together to form a landscape alive without sporting a single bird or bush. She saw canyons and craters, rifts and ridges, spires and steeples, boulders and bridges. And the sky flowed over it all with the same gooey caramel color she’d seen from space. Sam had a special place in her little heart for caramel. It was her absolute favorite food; if she could have it for every meal and dribble it on everything she ate, she would. A whole sky of caramel! Sometimes purple or gray streaks moved amidst the clouds, but she could ignore those.

Hunger.

 _Come on, Samantha, let’s get something to eat_.

Wearing a big grin, she nodded up at her new bird grandma.

A view outside soon became impossible as they walked down into a building. Air changed in temperature and smell, causing Sam to look around. She made a tiny gasp and held Old Bird’s hand tighter. The other Chozo were following them.

 _No need to worry, Samantha. They’re friends._ After some consideration and with an unchanging face, Sam tried a wave. The tall one, in front of the others, looked like he almost missed a step. A shorter one with long feathers and happy-looking eyes waved back. She smiled again. Still, that tall one kept looking at her funny. What was his problem?

Apparently, Old Bird noticed that, too. In an oval room with small, round windows on one side looking out on a rocky valley, Sam dangled her feet from a stool as she munched on some sort of sweet bread. Trying to be surreptitious, she looked over the rim of the pastry at Old Bird’s and the tall one’s silent conversation. Somehow, she could tell they were arguing. She really hoped it wasn’t about her. Maybe Old Bird didn’t land the spaceship right and the tall one, her husband, was telling her off. Or maybe the tall one wanted to talk about _finances_ and Old Bird didn’t want to talk about _finances_ because _finances_ were boring and nobody really knew what the word _finances_ meant anyway.

The more she studied the Chozo, the more she wanted to smile. They were actually pretty cute. She wondered in her most secret of thoughts if Old Bird or the tall one would let her pet their feathers. Probably not. They wore robes. People who wore robes in shows were always prissy and didn’t want anyone to hug them or shake their hand or even talk to them. Too bad, really. Sam had learned she could make a grownup smile when she hugged them, even if they were having a bad day. Along with her tear ducts, it was her greatest weapon.

Hey, there’s an idea! She could cry, then they’d notice her and maybe she’d find out what the tall one’s deal was. Before she knew it, she was squeezing the remaining bread morsel between her hands in her lap and sniveling. Bingo! Old Bird and the tall one looked over. Then, a gesture happened which was uncannily human: Old Bird made to walk over to her, but the tall one held out a hand and shook his head, coming over himself instead. But he didn’t kneel down like a grownup should’ve done; he just stood there, towering over her. Time to deploy crying stage two: looking up at the grownup and crying. Didn’t work.

 _Why are you doing that?_ asked the tall one’s mind-voice. It was wholly different from Old Bird’s gentle, warm thoughts; his was staccato icicles. She was so taken aback by this disparity she neglected to listen to the thought’s content. Accordingly, the question repeated.

She shrugged lopsidedly. He _still_ wouldn’t kneel down!

_Your gesture says you are unaware why you are crying and drawing my attention. This is a lie. You know full-well why you are doing this._

“Wh-what…?” she sniffed.

 _I want this to be a lesson to you, Samantha Aaron_. His gaze stopped her tears in their tracks. _You cannot lie to me anymore than you can lie to yourself. You may have been able to get away with this foolishness back on your home world. Not here. On this world, around us, you will learn clean, orderly thinking. Yes, we can read your thoughts. All of them. No lies, no tricks, no manipulation._

Well, now she wanted to cry for real. Why was he being so mean to her? What had she done? Oh, and of course, _now_ he crouched to meet her eye level.

 _My name is Grey Voice_ , he said with slightly less harshness. _I am intrigued to meet you, Samantha._ He offered a claw and she took it, trembling. _If you want to fear me, you can go ahead. There’s no real reason to, but it is understandable. I won’t begrudge you your fears or your other emotions, truly felt, so long as you don’t lie about them. Now, I’ve introduced myself, just like you wanted when you started your game. Ask yourself; would it not have been easier to simply ask me outright?_

Slowly, she nodded. Grey Voice nodded back, just once, curtly, and let go of her hand to pat her on the shoulder. She clenched (teeth and everything else), bracing for the hand to jostle her, but it didn’t. The touch was light. He wasn’t so mean. She shifted in place under his expectant gaze.

“I’m sorry, Grey Voice,” she mumbled. Never before had she been called out like this on her tactics. This foe would prove a worthy adversary.

 _Indeed I will._ He stood and she wiped her eyes. _Eat. There’s one more person we want you to meet before you settle in here._

“Another Chozo?” she asked mid-bite.

_No. This one is not a Chozo. She is different… younger._

“Like me!”

But her hopes were immediately dashed: _Not like you. Well… perhaps more like you than we are in certain ways._

And, for some reason, that drew Old Bird to silently chastise Grey Voice. Sam giggled as she munched on the bread and watched their bickering.

 

* * *

 

Consciousness had flickered in Samus’s mind like house lights in a storm. One second, she’d been falling; the next, she’d been here, in a smoldering crater. And if she’d had a headache before, it had nothing on this throbbing pain. Amazing. A concussion was all she needed now.

Before she even attempted to move the rest of her body, she used her throat and mouth to assess the damage. “Run diagnostic—hardware and software.” She winced and groaned an addendum: “And user.”

As she waited to receive the bad news, she watched the roiling steam and dust above her. She’d really hit hard. It felt silly, but being able to see that familiar, golden-brown Zebesian sky would go a long way for her right now. Growing up, it’d always lightened her mood to watch the caramel sky. It also, inevitably, made her hungry. Ah, there was the hunger. She smiled and chuckled softly at herself.

Ding! Order up! Prognosis was ready. As soon as she started reading the list, the smile drained from her face.

_System Report:_

  * _DBI instances: 12_
  * _Unresolved memory problems: 150 TB_
  * _diag. running properly_
  * _User diag. offline *ACTION REQUIRED*_
  * _Malware scan negative: no malicious software detected_
  * _Ans. List: <AG> <A-I> <A-S> <AW> <BB> <CR> <D> <F> <GF> <HH> <H-H> <JhC> <JS> <JV> <K-CT> <KG> <Lbka6> <L-O> <LTS> <M> <MI> <MJL> <MO> <M-LL> <M-W> <MT> <N> <R> <RR> <RZ> <SA> <SA’> <SB> <SB-O> <SO> <YXL> <ZHo> <ZHs> <ZHt>_
  * _Unr. List: <F’> <FB> <GT> <JG>*ACTION REQUIRED* <K-V> <LRJ> <PrrT> <RC> <V> <WS> <XA>*ACTION REQUIRED* <Zt>_



_User Vital Status:_

  * _N/A_
  * _User is deceased *ACTION REQUIRED*_



_Chozo Armorsuit Hardware Status:_

  * _PPS: ~100%_
  * _APS1: 0% *ALERT*_
  * _APS2: 0% *ALERT*_
  * _APS3: 14% *ALERT*_
  * _APS4: 85%_
  * _Pin intr. instances: 516 *ACTION REQUIRED*_
  * _Core temp.: max=126.28°C, min=-3.38°C_
  * _temp.: 1609.47°C *ALERT*_
  * _Temp.: 48.89°C *ACTION REQUIRED*_
  * _Coolant circ.: 2726.64 Lph_
  * _Coolant resv.: 2.23 L_
  * _CNTG: No breach_
  * _Plate integ. list: α=245*ACTION REQUIRED*, β=496*ALERT*, γ=610, δ=466*ALERT*, ε=482*ALERT*, ζ=756, η=943, θ=650, ι=120*ACTION REQUIRED*, κ=805, λ=924, μ=412*ALERT*, ν=043*ACTION REQUIRED*, ξ=568, ο=931, π=953, ρ=307*ALERT*, ς=542, σ=946, τ=675, υ=700, φ=948, χ=806, ψ=025*ACTION REQUIRED*, ω=116*ACTION REQUIRED*_
  * _Config.: OFFLINE *ACTION REQUIRED*_
  * _VFF: OFFLINE *ACTION REQUIRED*_
  * _Acc.: OFFLINE *ACTION REQUIRED*_
  * _Backup Grav. Acc.: OFFLINE *ACTION REQUIRED*_
  * _Eng. Feed to AUX (SAM34A): 66% *ALERT*_



Atmo and impact had shattered or otherwise shaken loose multiple physical components and weakened more, creating interruptions in the data lines feeding the suit’s sensors. Then, in addition to some software malfunctions from the heat and shock, the sensors read the broken lines as whatever the fuck they felt like, resulting in more hardware issues in the report than in reality. Problem was, until she got out of her suit and took a look, she had no idea which ones were real and which ones were bull.

But getting out also presented a problem; the suit told her she was dead. News to her. The vital sensors had malfunctioned. True, she felt like a punching bag filled with glassware, but how extensive was the damage? If she opened up the suit and flopped out now, would broken ribs shift and puncture organs? Would hemorrhages contained by pressure suddenly swell up? The point was moot anyway: one of the functioning sensors reported an external temperature of over 1600 degrees. If she got out, she’d just catch fire. Then, maybe, she’d fall apart. Fortunately, the coolant system was unruptured, so she resolved to wait there and let things cool off.

A few more pressing matters came to mind: armor integrity and equipment malfunctions. Chozo armor didn’t break easily and it hadn’t quite broken here, but it was close. She’d landed on her back. Minor damage to the upper cuisses and heavy damage to the rear tasset. The ground had literally kicked her ass. Up from there, the fauld grip remained intact as it was the most flexible piece of the external armor structure. Following the same logic, the faulds themselves showed signs of heavy impact, but no damage which required attention. The plackart, however, was a different story; it’d almost cracked through. Its jet assemblies, one over each of her shoulder blades, had been crushed (which explained the gravimetric assistance malfunction). Each pauldron hung tenuously in place; one good shot on each would break them free. But the helmet was intact, save for a few internal circuits getting bumped loose and the new addition of an annoying fracture snaking its way across the right side of her visor. Pressure held, thank-god, so it didn’t yet pose a problem.

All-in-all pretty good for unassisted planetfall. Not something she’d elect to do again, but now she knew she could at least survive it (relatively) intact. But that’s where the good news ended. Suit systems—auxiliary functions to assist mobility and weaponry—were almost completely shot. The weight of the damage numbed her; she had no idea where to start if she was going to fix the damage. Hell, she barely understood how most of the shit in there worked on a good day. Chozo Armorsuits didn’t exactly come with user manuals.

What a wonderful time to get a warning ping on the radar. The upper-right of her visor’s HUD displayed a handy little set of nested circles, representing the surrounding area at a maximum radius outside of half a kilometer. Okay, so it wasn’t all radar; that was just one piece of it, cooperating with infrasonic seismic pulses, magnetic, a full range of electromagnetic field detectors, and some as-yet-unknown sensory systems. Fortunately, it hadn’t been damaged in the fall. Unfortunately, it now showed a blip moving in from the north. Too big and fast to be a bird—most likely a pirate skiff. Shit!

Maybe it wasn’t there to investigate; maybe it was just flying by. But then she watched the blip change course and start circling the crater’s perimeter. She gritted her teeth and waited for them to fly directly overhead. They wouldn’t see any more than a hot metal meteorite… hopefully.

Here they came. She commanded her visor to switch to x-ray visualization and it promptly told her to fuck off. _What!? No—respond!_ That, too, had been damaged in the fall. She balled a fist and almost slammed it against the ground, but thoughts of shattering fragile bones stayed her wrath. So she couldn’t see them or count them. And if she moved now, they’d see that. Conclusion: she’d have to wait here until they landed and the ground party started moving in. Steam and dust from the crater still lingered, which would provide visual cover for her.

The degrading wait on the ground at least allowed her to plan her attack. _Plan her attack_. Disgusting. Samus hated attacking from stealth; she hated waiting around and playing by the enemy’s timing. The battlefield responded to and worked for _her_ and no one else. But it was better than dying.

Four scouts departed the craft and walked in towards her. Closer… closer… _C’mon, you bastards, that’s it, just a little more…_ With just fourteen meters left between her and the encroaching Nargs, Samus could now make out their shifting, watery shadows in the gray mist. Slowly, she shifted her position. Sharp pain in her right hip, pulsing aches in her neck and shoulders. She pivoted on her right pauldron and extended her armcannon.

One of the systems damaged in the crash was her advanced targeting system, so she’d have to fall back on a safe bet: a saw. Usually, she fired heavy bursts of energy from her weapon, but it could be narrowed and focused until it became a deadly ray. If she did it right, she could aim at an elevated angle and saw off their heads in a few swipes, then let the air, thick with debris, snuff out the laser and keep it from showing through. The commander, watching from the skiff, would never see it. Neither would these four vermin.

Ten meters and she took aim. Inside the armcannon, she squeezed in the trigger and— _one, two, three, four_ —Narg heads fell clean from their bodies. Her finger let off.

 

* * *

 

Mother saw all. Even if a signal jammer could disrupt video feed between a forward recon party and the commander in his skiff, it could not stop Mother’s connection with her children. Each one had been brought before her soon after the taking of Zebes. As such, she now saw through their eyes and heard through their ears; she felt as they felt and knew what they knew. Mother saw the red flash strike out from the silhouette in the mists down in that crater. She saw it four times, simultaneously. Mother felt the laser sear through each neck—each life blinking off and severing the feed.

_Who are you?_

The silhouette hadn’t been enough to tell. Use the rest of the recon squad—let them feed her information before they died. Waste no additional resource.

 

* * *

 

Getting to her feet proved both a challenge and a gamble for Samus. In a few minutes, it’d probably be cool enough to open up and examine herself. But by then, the pirate commander would likely have an airstrike ready to bomb her to hell. Her damaged armor couldn’t take that. So she had to move.

Pain tore at her hip any time she put the slightest weight on it. Had her suit recognized its user as alive rather than dead, it would be helping her out by shifting weight away accordingly. She had to do it manually now. Plates shifted and relocked, servos whirred, hinges clicked. In the end, the pain in her hip actually doubled, but only from the pressure now applied to it, not from the assured damage of using it to support her weight. At least the nerves still worked. The suit couldn’t move without her motion inside, being resistively motorized.

She walked with only a slight limp. She knew she could not run and she could forget about jumping, ducking, dodging, rolling, all of that.

Soon after she began her trek, the blip representing the skiff, parked on the rim of the crater, birthed a smaller dot, which now moved in slowly to meet her. Why weren’t they taking the skiff up to take another look? Oh well; one more grunt shouldn’t pose any problems for her.

And it didn’t. Her passive jamming field caught him just as he was transmitting something. In Urtragh, the Narg had said, “Wait—I see something ahead! Should I open fire, sir?” This was followed by repeated attempts to raise whatever commander held this one’s leash.

She raised her weapon and fired a single burst at the shadow ahead, blowing apart his shoulder. Bleeding, weapon-arm severed, the pirate fell before her. He looked like the others: modified inside and out by cybernetic enhancements to allow fluid operation on Zebes’s surface. They intended to stay.

 He was saying something, but she couldn’t make it out. What a ridiculous creature. As she passed him by, she used her boot to nudge the plasma rifle he’d been carrying, sending it tumbling down the slope into the crater. The Narg’s remaining arm reached after it lamely, then dropped to the dirt, hopeless. The wound was fatal; time would drain him of blood, then life.

Either way she sliced it, the cat was out of the bag. The commander had to know she (or whatever he thought she was) was coming. Two possibilities: he takes off or he stays to fight. One of these presented no immediate danger to her, so she prepared for the one which would.

The skiff waited for her just beyond the rim of the crater. She’d be able to climb over no problem (okay, _some_ problem, but not much), but that’d present a fairly stationary target for the skiff’s turrets to unload into. Instead, she came right up to the rim itself, squatting down, not yet daring to peek over, and began quietly digging. The rock had been softened up by her impact; now it became corn bread in her hand. She dug laterally, creating a dip in the rim. Through this new embrasure she peered. The mist held, along with the recent onset of evening. Size and light dynamics were on her side; she was small and inside a darkened region relative to the larger skiff, open to the light. She could see it almost clearly but it couldn’t see her. And there was its main turret. Perfect.

Samus’s armcannon stacked and stored energy within itself, awaiting its master’s trigger-pull to loose the stored power in a charged blast. She charged up just under the point when light would start leaking through the muzzle and held it, taking careful aim. Targeting computers helped, but you can’t call yourself a warrior if you can’t aim your weapon on your own.

Energy ripped out into the twilight, curling the surrounding mist and smoke in its wake. Direct hit! The turret shattered. Next up: the plasma machinegun on top—

 _Where the hell are you going now?_ The skiff had lifted into the air and now turned to fly away. Samus erected and fired again. And again. _C’mon…!_ She aimed for the exhaust ports in the craft’s rear. If she could hit those, the engine would choke and fail.

Hastily, she clambered over the rim and stumbled forward, firing all the while. Finally, after ten more shots (some of them connecting, but in the wrong areas), she hit the exhaust and slumped down onto her knees to watch the target sputter and fall, finally bursting into a fireball on the ground. Its orange incandescence added a welcome warmth to the otherwise cold, alien landscape. She’d returned a little piece of life back to Zebes.

Walking towards the wreck, the sky became open to her. Somehow, she’d known all along the old, scrumptious color had been stolen from it. After all, how could her home look the same now that it was infected by this filth? It had to change. Rain clouds rolled in, further blocking out hope for nostalgia. It so rarely rained there; most of the moisturization necessarily occurred underground, where all the life was. That’s not to say it never happened. Zebes did have some scant surface life and it needed occasional misting. This downpour, though…

To mock her, nostalgia rose in her anyway, along with another memory from back then.

 

* * *

 

Four years after waking from her long sleep, Sam wasn’t so little anymore. In fact, she felt like a giant. Her unclad feet hammered the mossy stone as she ran and she imagined the moss as a dense jungle. Each footfall would be an earthquake, rending the forest floor, sending the animals running. Later, paleontologists would analyze the line of massive, foot-shaped craters and wonder what sort of space goddess once shaped this landscape.

Ahead, the boulders lessened in size. Sam leapt from one to the other. She hopped and skipped, twirling in the air gleefully, using her training. In her mind, she recognized the paradox: that on her day off from school and training, she still practiced. She shrugged it off. She was having fun; so what if she did so using the stuff taught in class?

The cave she ran through sloped down towards a yawning mouth. Her path followed a tongue of amber something (it wasn’t water), snaking its way down among the polished rocks and out towards sunlight. That was Sam’s favorite part of this path.

Fresh, dry air met her as she raced the not-water out of the cave. And there, after three little drops in the stream, began the longest, deepest river on the surface of Zebes. Its main source stemmed not from the subterranean moisture cycles feeding the scant other surface rivers; it instead originated from rainfall on a coastal mountain range towering behind the cave’s opening. Today’s forecast predicted rain again today, here and likely nowhere else.

She skidded to a halt right on the precipice of the churning red-orange liquid below. It’d carved a path down the mountainside. Her eyes followed its progress down into the plains below where its meanders became grand almost-circles. From up there, it looked like someone had let fall a long thread of yarn into a winding pattern all the way to the horizon.

Everywhere else on the surface cracked with thirst. Even here, Sam felt her nose and throat drying out. Underground or inside, where she and the Chozo spent all their time, humidity was ubiquitous—even oppressive at times. She could stand the dryness here, mitigated by the river’s vapors. Here, she could wait comfortably for the rain to come.

Throwing her head back, she sat on the small cliff, dangling her feet over the leaping rapids. It tried its best to catch her toes. Her palms soaked up heat from the rock. Earthy air filled her voracious lungs. A fresh haircut from Old Bird meant no strands impeded her view of the shining heavens, where clouds now marched in formation, sagging low with their liquid loads.

 _Rain_ , she commanded, and reached up a hand. Lately, she’d noticed her elbows more. Why was that? Now, with her arm stretched out like that, the elbow was flush, but the brachioradialis cut a defined curve over the forearm. And her hand looked too big—fingers too spindly. _Stupid body; you’re only twelve; stop growing so much._ She turned her will back to the weather and commanded from the depths of her mind: _Rain on me!_

As if the wind had ears, rain loosed from the clouds and began falling on the mountainside. The river drank it up to feed its bends; Sam closed her eyes and let it wash over her warm skin.

 

* * *

 

_So it’s you._

Mother glared from her mind, through the eyes of the dying pirate commander, up at the dimming visage of a scorched set of heavily modified Chozo Armor. Only one such set existed in the universe and it belonged to Samus Aran, the Chozo’s pet human.

Now it clicked in her mind—the Trojan Horse! That first craft, destroyed so easily as an appetizer for the Federal Police’s blundering defeat, had been _hers_. Of course she’d survived; unlike the other survivor, there’d been no luck, just a living tenacity. Samus Aran would not die easily, nor would she surrender. The Chozo—the source of literally every problem in Mother’s world—had trained her too well.

Had they sent her? Was it possible? Yes, it was. Was it likely? No. With what she now knew about that devil race, secrecy overrode all other precedents. The Chozo had a plan. True, it didn’t involve Mother’s betrayal and the propagation of Metroids on Zebes, but neither could it allow the use of Samus Aran as a weapon to cleanse the galaxy.

Dammit all! If she had planned accordingly, she could have prevented the Chozo’s mass-exodus; she could have held them hostage here to await trial by [REDACTED]. They would have made excellent gifts of goodwill to help her ascension. And then to watch them be unmade would have provided so divine a dessert.

But they had escaped and now _she_ was here, the little bitch. Mother’s surrounding nutrient soup churned and bubbled. She dug in her perfect memory to replay that fateful meeting.

 

Aurora Unit 002, named _Australis_ by Dr. Sorel’s team, now dubbed _Mother_ by the Chozo masters, waited. She was biding her time until the perfect opportunity presented itself. Born right there in her tank under Zebes one hundred and seventy-three years prior, she’d since had a difficult life. Changes had been forced upon her, resulting in a complete decimation of her original purpose and the construction of her new life as both patient and servant. Hate had no place in the cold, calculating mind of an Aurora Unit—likewise with ambition, pride, and shame. Mother felt all of these things in full; and that they should have been foreign reinforced them all the harder. And one day, she would be able to shirk the present veil of subservience and display the glory of these feelings. Oh, how she longed for that day to come!

But today was not that day. Today, she would have to entertain a guest in her court (dungeon). Apparently, the Chozo had been able to secure one survivor from the pirate raid on distant human mining colony K-2L. And now that she saw this lone remnant of that tragedy, she understood the disappointment shining clear as day from the present Chozo’s minds. A child, barely out of infancy, waddled up to meet her, flanked by Old Bird and Grey Voice.

The toddler was understandably upset; it’s not every day you meet a gigantic brain in a tank sporting a single, piercing eyeball. It was still annoying. Mother hid her disdain as she waited for Old Bird to calm her down. Mother could sense a similarly hidden impatience in Grey Voice. Of all the Chozo, she hated him the least, probably for a certain distaste they shared for the coddling and swaddling of the inferior masses populating the galaxy. Still a Chozo, though.

Okay, the girl was coming around now. Her name was Samantha—Samantha _Aaron_. Ah. That explained everything.

 _Go ahead, Samantha. Say hello_ , Old Bird told the child. Samantha shuffled her feet, hiding most of the way behind Old Bird’s sleeve. She mewled something incoherent. Her human mind, as usual, projected the basic meaning of her statement unconsciously. Held back by her programming restraints from delving into others’ minds, Mother received this simple, surface message.

If she was going to have to interact with this girl, she might as well make their exchanges comfortable. No need to stack annoyance on top of annoyance. Mother responded in smooth, audible vocalization alone: “Hello, Samantha. The Chozo here call me Mother. You may call me that if you’d like, or you may call me _Aurora_ , or _Australis_ , or _002_.” She was probably giving the undeveloped brain too much at once, she realized too late. Now she’d have to slow down her delivery of information to accommodate a lesser mentality. Why was she being cursed like this?

“You’re… a mommy?” Samantha asked. Somehow, this comforted the child. Mother could tell.

“Yes,” she answered, still without telepathy, “this planet, its creatures, its plants, its things, they are my children.”

Samantha looked from the brain to the Chozo, then back to the brain. Old Bird answered her unspoken query: _She is not_ our _mother. When we came to this world, we saw it needed a mother. That’s why we brought Mother here_.

“Why does a planet need a mommy? I thought they weren’t alive.”

 _Good question_ , Mother thought sardonically, but did not transmit.

 _Mother takes care of the planet for us,_ Old Bird explained. _She can concentrate on keeping everything running; that’s her job and she does it well. She also helps us talk with the Federation_.

“Okay,” said Samantha, clearly not comprehending in total.

 _Mother_ , piped up Grey Voice, _Miss Aaron will be staying with us for a little while. She may have some trouble breathing the air, since it is so different from her world. Would you be so kind as to prepare for her a room where she can sleep and get used to the air quickly?_

At least, that’s what he said on the channel available to everyone in the room; on a lower channel, sealed from the human’s telepathically lame mind, he gave a more complete summary and order: _The mission was a failure; the Aaron child was the only one we were able to secure. Consensus has provided a plan to perhaps salvage some good from this catastrophe. She isn’t ready for the Last Hope—not by a long shot—but through extensive treatment, we believe she could, someday, put the bloodline back on track. Prepare the bubble, but reconfigure it to accept Samantha’s DNA. It won’t all go through, but we hope most will be enough. Get as close as you can._

 _A sample from the mother would go a long way_ , Mother replied on the same deep channel. _Do we have one?_

 _Yes. We’ll provide samples from the mother and the father_. Here he paused and mentally cleared his throat. _From the proposed father_.

_And the Last Hope? A sample of that—_

Grey Voice put his foot down, as she thought he would. _We have no plans to expose that to anyone at this point. We’ve been over this, Mother. Contact with the Last Hope by any but one specifically prepared would be disastrous on multiple levels. Parental samples should be enough._ Oh well, had to try.

Then, to everyone, as though not a beat had been skipped, Mother softly said, “Of course. I’ll prepare your room, Samantha. I hope you’ll be comfortable here.”

Samantha smiled faintly. _Let’s see if you’re still smiling by the time these rapacious devils are done with you. It would have been better for you had you burned with the rest of your family._

Did she feel pity for the kid? Is that what this was? Mother actually considered activating her chamber’s defense systems then and there to kill her. And she knew it would bring satisfaction only because further pain would be averted. For the child. But she knew she couldn’t. No matter what, the Chozo were going to do to Samantha what they were going to do. If Mother tried sabotage or outright rebellion, it wouldn’t matter. With a single thought from any of them, she’d shut down and they’d simply complete their cruel plans manually.

So Mother would have to help raise this little human. She’d have to play along in the sick game. Anyway, it didn’t matter. The life of one child wasn’t enough to reroute her plans for glorious ascendance. She had to keep in mind her ultimate goal and never stray from it. One day, she _would_ have freedom. Then, this galaxy and its worthless systems could go to hell.

 

Samantha had grown, taken the name _Samus_ , waltzed through the elaborate slaughterhouse called Zebes with nary a care, and now returned, full of piss and vinegar and all sorts of issues. Mother had failed her before. She wouldn’t fail her now. Samus was infected and she didn’t know it. A parasite grew in her, forming a devil on her shoulder—a parasite called _Hope_. After this long together, it couldn’t be extracted without killing the host. So be it.

What a bitch. Why hadn’t she just stayed away?


	9. Surgery

“This is DIN. Good morning; it is currently ten-o-clock, Sextilis the eighteenth, 235 here in Etváçous-Daiban City. I’m Harriet Bonn—”

“And I’m Diegus Starson.”

“Welcome to Interstellar Sparks where we bring you the top, up-to-date headline stories from across the galaxy. The Galactic Senate debates are ongoing regarding what action to take—if any—against the Chozo homeworld Zebes. Joining us today, in order to help explain the congressional process and how it works with the Federal Police, is former Tellurian-human senator Horace González. Mr. González, welcome.”

“Thank you, Harriet, it’s great to be here; it’s great to be back in this wonderful city.”

“How long has it been since you last took a seat in humanity’s constituent box?”

“It’s been seventeen years now.”

“Do you miss it? Being a senator, that is?”

“You know, I do some days, but mostly I just enjoy retirement. We’re still on Iridis—my family—and I’m working on a few things, but at my pace, you know?”

“And what’s changed in the political world since you left?”

“Hoh, what hasn’t? I mean, some things never change, obviously, like the feel of a senate meeting and hearing all the viewpoints of all the races in the galaxy come together and really hash it out. That’ll always be the same. I can hope. But what’s changed? Y’know, it’s a young man’s game now, Diegus. Things move fast and if you’re too slow to keep up, they’ll leave you behind.”

“Are you talking specifically about diplomatic relations here on Daiban or the whole job of being a senator?”

“The whole thing—from campaigning to election to sitting the constituency to debating a bill to—as we have now—discussing the horrible situation with the Chozo. It just moves so fast now. I don’t know when it got that way.”

“On the subject of the Chozo situation, a lot of denizens are seeing for the first time a real-time, large-scale, publicly-broadcast debate about how—and, indeed, _why_ —we should deploy the Federal Police and they’re questioning how that fits in with the Galactic Council. Why is it that we are only now seeing a senate debate to decide the actions of the Federal Police instead of just seeing the results of Chairman of Galactic Peace Rhys Hardy’s decisions?”

“Well, first of all, it’s not the first time we’ve seen this; the government is, right now, following a very specific procedure, set down by the constitution, for dealing with just this sort of situation—”

“That being a constituent race becoming belligerent.”

“Exactly. Normally, Harriet, you’re right—and the people see it clearly: Chairman of Galactic Peace—it’s Hardy now; it was an Al-Jauzan named Slieght-Farneese for the majority of my time in the senate—makes a call about how and when to use the police forces under his command. However, his usual task is to ensure the denizens of the Milky Way follow federal law, as well as to combat piracy. It’s almost unheard-of to see the Federation face one of its own in battle. I say _almost_ because it’s almost happened before, once, with the Zeggish race. I remember that; I was about, oh, ten-ish at the time. I remember my parents completely glued to their screens, watching the debates.”

“That’s when there was a civil war on the Zeggish homeworld Xarael, wasn’t it?”

“That’s what caused it, yes, that’s exactly right. And in that case, the Federation stepped back, as it should have, and said, ‘We won’t help you kill each other. You’ll have to settle this dispute on your own.’ We have an anti-war clause in our constitution for that very reason. It’s only when the Zeggs’ battles started spilling over into other systems, getting other races—innocent people—involved that the Federation came in with something more than embargos and sanctions. Fortunately, once we told them, y’know, ‘Hey, cut that out!’ did they settle down. It was scary.”

“What makes this situation different?”

“Oh, it’s simple: the Chozo won’t talk to us. See, during the whole Xarael crisis, we could talk to the Zeggish leaders; there was near-constant communication, trying to settle the whole thing as peacefully as possible. But the Chozo’ve just up and disappeared. I wish we could talk to them, I really do. I wish we could just sit down with any one of them and find out where things went wrong. I think we could fix it. We’re the Galactic Federation. We’ve never met a problem we couldn’t solve. But they won’t talk to us. And it’s a shame, because, now, it’ll take exponentially more time and effort on their part—when and if this situation resolves—to earn their way back into our good graces. I’m not saying it’ll be impossible for them; all people and races deserve second chances.”

“Indeed; thank you, Mr. González. We’ll be back with more in-depth analysis of the ongoing debates after this.”

 

* * *

 

Commercials rolled in the background, just as unheeded as their bookending program. Kallie and Terry were packing.

“Jim—Jim, listen, I know it’s sudden,” Kallie was saying into the holographic phone interface she’d set to float by her head, “but I swear to you it’s important! Did you get the PM I sent?”

As Jim apparently responded, Terry attempted to decipher urgent hand signals and facial expressions from his girlfriend across the room. He failed, and shrugged. She rolled her eyes and pointed forcefully at something half-hidden under one of the pillows.

“Yeah, so you get it then, right?” She caught the hairbrush tossed by Terry and mouthed a _thank-you_. “No! No-no-no-no, the _other_ one! There should be another— No, Jim? Jim! Scroll down. Just scroll down in your inbox.” She paused and rolled her eyes. “Well whose fault is that? Never mind; do you see it? Okay, so read it! It’s all in there!”

Terry had his back-turned, folding clothes, when Kallie started impersonating a skipping audio track, soon followed by hasty words: “Don’t read it out _loud!_ I sent it privately for a reason, Jim! God!” Terry had to hold his laughter back in his throat. “So?”

He faced her again and watched the undulations of her eyebrows and lips as she listened to her boss’s side of the conversation. Finally, they settled in a wild grin and she pumped a fist. “Jim, you’re the best, I love you, I want to have ten of your babies—” she kissed audibly at the phone “thank you so much!” and she hung up.

Her further gesticulations of excitement clashed with Terry’s pose, stock-still, arms folded, lips tight, and head cocked. “Ten babies?” he asked.

“Oh, you know as well as I do he’s the gayest man alive.” She dismissed everything and gathered an armful of junk to dump into her suitcase. “Now it’s your turn.”

“My turn to have ten babies?”

“Ha-ha. You know what I mean. Prel and Howell—you have to get the okay from them.”

“Easy for you to say; I can’t be as convincing as you, Kallie.”

She pouted his way. “Aw, c’mon, you’ll do fine. Just lay out the facts for them and—”

“Kallie, we don’t have any facts. We have your investigative nose. It’s enough for me, but I doubt it’ll be enough for them. And besides, I’m supposed to do my own investigations, not rely on the press.”

“Well, _the press_ is your girlfriend and she wants you to be with her. I don’t want to do this alone, Terry. It could be dangerous, but, also, I love you and I don’t like the prospect of being apart from you so soon and for so long.”

“I get that; I feel the same way.” He sighed. “I’ll try, but I can’t promise I’ll be able to get through to them. I’m supposed to be here, helping look into the Chozo’s whereabouts, not out galivanting across space on a crusade against corporate greed. Law enforcement doesn’t work like that.”

“Try,” she said, reaching out to take his hand across the bed. “I believe in you.”

Terry had very little to actually pack. They’d gotten this room just yesterday and almost all his stuff was still in his bags. One of the bags sat open before him, displaying his clothes and, if he stuck his hand in between the layers of underwear, a curious little velvet-lined box. He held it where it was, running his thumb along the seam and hinges. When was he going to get the chance? Now wasn’t the time. In transit wasn’t the time.

On Tallon IV? Neither scenario lent itself well to a proposal. Either they found some dirt for Kallie to dig on (in which case she’d be too caught up in her job for him to reasonably distract her with this sort of thing) or they’d find nothing (in which case Kallie would be incredibly depressed and potentially hostile).

So he’d have to wait until they got back. But even then, it depended on the manner of their return. He could potentially pop the question at celebratory dinner back here in the city. Yeah, that sounded like it’d work. But if they returned empty-handed, he’d have to wait—play it by ear—until she either moved on from the story or got another lead. He’d propose once she had her fire back.

But, just in case, he might as well bring it along. After all, he wasn’t about to let something that important sit around in a storage locker for two-plus months.

Softly serenading the scene from the TV, First Speaker Ghen made some sparse opening remarks to the senate, again gathered in their immense auditorium.

 

* * *

 

“I’ll call to order this meeting of the Galactic Senate here in Congressional Tower at ten forty-three in the morning, Sextilis the eighteenth, year 235. Roll-call shows voting quorum. The main item on today’s agenda is Proposition 1286-D, titled _In-absentia Expulsion of the Chozo Race from the Galactic Federation_. The proposition has been submitted for discussion by the representatives in the Emergency Threat-assessment Subcommittee and approved by myself and the other senate leaders. A copy of the proposition has been made available to all representatives present here today. For the record, I will now read the proposition’s content.”

Ghen proceeded to dole out the proposition in a tone befitting the bone-dry source material. Keaton, who’d already read the document last night, tuned out and instead subtly studied the reactions of those around her. They all knew what this was. Expelling the Chozo in-absentia would require a two thirds vote, but, if passed, it would essentially force the issue onto the next stage. Fast-tracking processes like these had always rubbed Keaton the wrong way. They were messy.

But, she had to admit, this was probably the best way to go about this. Debating whether or not to bombard a constituent world would have taken months and likely resulted in an unactionable stalemate. On the other hand, if you first expel said constituent world, all the debates become moot. Not our colleagues anymore, so who cares? Fry them.

Likely most representatives in the room worried more about two things: how their vote would make them look and what sort of precedent this would set. Indeed, this would be the first case of expulsion in Federation history. Keaton wasn’t above such things. She was a politician, through-and-through. Her imagination set before her all the paths she could take at this juncture. Which one led the surest route to the Chair?

Public opinion still played tug-of-war over the Chozo question. It was hard for anyone to turn their back on the birds. Keaton herself wasn’t yet convinced. But convictions, if in opposition to victory, must come second. She smiled. Of course, that’s what would be expected of a senator. To Wijhu Keaton, convictions never died; integrity was everything. That’s what would get her elected.

Her road lit up with spotlights while the others crumbled into shadow: _stand out by holding to your beliefs_. Such a prospect sent other politicians either running for the hills or doubling over in laughter, but the people ended up loving it. She understood, of course, this was its own form of political illusion; it simply worked well for her.

Ghen came to the end of his recitation. They’d debate the document, pick apart the language, make suggested edits, wait for resubmission, then debate some more. Eventually, though, she knew it’d come to a vote. And when that day came, she knew exactly where she’d stand.

At times like these, she found herself thinking of Samus Aran, her guardian angel. The galaxy needed more people like Samus—people who faced danger with raised fists and a cool head. Samus had been taken from the universe, so Keaton would have to step up.

 

* * *

 

Armstrong’s meeting with Mother had left him feeling woozy and defeated. Or was that his dismemberment? Honestly, it was getting hard for him to tell the difference between physical and mental anguish.

At present, he half-sat, half-stood beside a rattling conveyor belt, studying a constant stream of broken rock. Apparently, the pirates had brought enough excavation equipment to dig the hole, but not enough to automate the whole process. He served as one among hundreds down in the dingy depths tasked with separating out ores. His target was uranium. The kindly masters had seen fit to supply him with thin, torn foil gloves for the work. _Great—thanks—I’m sure these are definitely enough protection against the radiation_. Also a thick, black apron which he was sure hadn’t always been so black (or so thick).

His coworkers wore similar raiment, though none of them were Cognata-sapiens like him. Most of them looked to be the same pirate type (species? race? model? make?) he’d seen on the surface. No weapons, though. The pirates must have had some way to replace integrated weapons with harmless appendages. Of course they would; as far as Armstrong was concerned, these pirates could do anything. Trapped in this wide, low cavern of inconsistent light and humidity must be a form of punishment for insubordinate or incompetent drones. Or for prisoners of war.

Indeed, most of them were Nargs (he’d only just remembered the proper term for them; everyone in the Force just called them pirates), but not all of them. Beside him stood a Jamor. More massive than a Boivix and ape-like in all aspects of their visage. This one’s name was Pais. Anytime the guard passed along the line in its patrol, Armstrong would attempt conversation with Pais. Sometimes, it worked.

There went the guard. Armstrong leaned over and, as usual, Pais recoiled as though his partner’s voice were a lash.

“Hi, Pais,” he began, trying to be gentle. “Can you talk today?”

Pais continued his work. Slowly, Armstrong saw, the Jamor’s tiny black eyes roamed his surroundings. Pais then spoke with a weak, uneven, unpracticed voice: “We shouldn’t talk. Not allowed.”

“They can’t hear us right now,” Armstrong replied quickly. Pais simply shook his head, so he plowed ahead. “When did they get you?”

Pais cringed. Armstrong wished he would just talk to him. He’d already related his own tale of capture, but he wasn’t sure if any of his words stuck.

“Are you from Jamoru?” Armstrong asked for maybe the fifth time. What would get this guy’s attention? “Can you understand anything these pirates say?”

Somehow, _that_ did it. Pais nodded and leaned closer to Armstrong so he could smell the dirt and grime in the Jamor’s matted fur. “They’ve changed. This planet changed them; something here changed them. We were in a ship before, working in the food production plant. We landed here and they changed. Now they speak slower but act faster. One sees what the other sees. They talk about their mother; they all have the same one. They share dreams. They didn’t used to. It makes them worried.”

Well. That was unexpected. Armstrong would’ve liked to have kept going, but another guard was walking up the line. The two hulking figures leaned apart again and resumed silent work.

 _They all have the same mother_. _Mother_. That Pais hadn’t included himself in those under Mother’s influence raised several questions in Armstrong’s mind. That, and how the pirates had _changed_ upon landing here. It must’ve been Mother. A telepathic Aurora working for the pirates… Was she working for them? It sounded more like she had caught them in her web and was now enslaving them, just as she’d caught and enslaved him.

Again, a haunting possibility confronted him: maybe Mother wasn’t the only one. Maybe he’d caught a glimpse of the Space Pirates’ true command structure. That would mean they had their own Aurora Network. Such coveted intel _had_ to make its way back to the Federation. But first, he’d have to get out of this hell-hole.

 _Oh no_. The guard had slowed its patrol and now paused behind Armstrong. _It noticed our conversation! I’ll be punished! It’ll make an example of me!_ He braced himself for the beating (or whatever he’d have to endure) and seized up when his arm became enclosed by one of the pirate’s claw-like hands.

It was pulling on his arm. _Will it try to amputate me? Again!? Why am I not fighting back!?_ He was too scared. Soon, he found himself forced down to a seated position on the ground. That’s when he noticed not one but two pirates before him. One of them held some sort of contraption. At first glance, he thought it was some sort of antique blunderbuss, with its wide, tubular protrusion and an angled-down sort of handle on the opposite end. Were they going to execute him with that? Why? Why use something like that and not their more efficient, standard-issue plasma weaponry? It confounded him almost enough to overcome his paralyzing terror.

One of the pirates gurgled and barked, pointing at him. The second hastily knelt and, to Armstrong’s horror, reached for his leg stump. So they would torture him using a preexisting wound—one they’d used their (admittedly advanced) medicine to close so quickly and completely? None of this made any sense! Why couldn’t these things just do something normal?

He closed his eyes tight and waited for the pain. Instead, he felt pressure and discomfort, all on the end of his right leg. They’d open up the wound again. They’d play with it. What could be more humiliating than torture? Why, being played with like a toy by something too evil to see it as torture.

Eyes open, he dared not look down at the cruel work. He sought Pais, pleading with all but his voice. Pais wasn’t looking at him; he was working. _You bastard! You traitor! I thought we were friends!_

Finally, skin tore and pain bore into his leg. He screamed and, only now, thrashed. The guard held him down. Pain met pressure and skin met something cold and tight, wrapped around his thigh.

And then it was over. The guard continued to hold him, but the other stood and retreated. A harsh chirp from the guard, accompanied by a jostling of Armstrong’s shoulders, broke his unconscious whimpering. The guard got off him, removed the stool Armstrong had been leaning against for work, and gestured. The meaning was clear enough: _On your feet, we’re done here._

Armstrong Houston had a new right leg.

 

* * *

 

Lightning. That made three storm fronts today. The pirates were actively drowning Zebes. Somehow, they’d gained access to Mother’s climate control systems. What did they hope to accomplish? It didn’t make much sense to Samus; it also made no difference. They wouldn’t get away with this.

Get away with _what_? In truth, Samus was more worried for the Chozo than angry about the state of her home. The implications couldn’t be ignored: Mother couldn’t’ve fallen to the pirates with the Chozo still around, therefore the Chozo had been removed from the picture. Yet, similarly, without first eliminating Mother, the Chozo were unmovable. She tried not to focus on the infuriating _why_ s. In Old Bird’s wise words: _Understanding a thing is personal—it can wait._ Also his words: _One cannot solve a problem without first understanding it_. So what should she do?

Well, right now, she couldn’t do much of anything. After dealing with the scouts, she’d limped four miles to the nearest little cave. Blessedly, it remained unchanged since her childhood. She climbed inside and, once she was sure she was alone, started slowly opening up parts of her armor.

Breaking a pressurized seal on Zebes would kill any average carbon-based oxygen-breather within seconds. Thanks to the Chozo, Samus was far from average. The vast amounts of chlorine and chloric compounds in the air bothered her not at all. Neither did the atmospheric abundance of helium stack octaves on her voice. Even the rain—chlorosulphane and decidedly not water—could wash over her bare skin and leave no ill effects. All thanks to genetic alterations, hormonal treatment, and extensive surgery when she was a child. She still didn’t understand all of it.

The pirates did something similar to their ground troops upon occupying planets, though with significantly less care applied to the patient and a lot more scars to show for it. For decades, FedSci had been laboring to figure out why they didn’t just use pressure suits. Wouldn’t that be cheaper and less traumatic? It remained one among many mysteries surrounding the Space Pirates.

In Samus’s case, it’d been compassion. The Chozo had the technology and knowhow and, since a little Earth-mammal would be living with them, they might as well make it easy on her. That was the sentiment, anyway. She personally questioned whether losing all those years to the medically-induced coma was indeed worth it just to be able to play outside once in a while.

Her helmet lay beside her, displaying a blown-up, brightened version of its radar. She glanced at it periodically to make sure it held only one yellow dot. Her weapon, too, rested beside it, ready to receive her arm quickly in case of emergency. A few patches of gauze rested on that arm. They soaked up blood from the needle wounds remaining after removing the armcannon. At least that was the extent of the damage there. The left arm sported a dislocated ulna and fractured radius. Thus, most of her effort came from the right arm.

Plates dislodged from their holdings and swung open on their hinges, sometimes clanging to the floor beside where she sat. Three… four… five ribs cracked. Fuck. Samus chewed her lip and poked at the others to make sure she had the number right. She did. She heaved a sigh. Big mistake. After a wince and a cringe, she resolved to take her breathing and torso movements slower. She’d had the good sense to eat an emergency ration after removing her helmet and _only_ her helmet. Swallowing and digesting without the suit’s specific embrace sounded like a one-way ticket to internal bleeding.

More poking, prodding, squeezing followed. She paid a lot of attention to her hip and found it worse than she’d originally anticipated. Right sacroiliac cartilage twisted and torn out of place; coccyx shattered; Multiple fractures running through the iliac, again on the right side. Somewhere in there, a nerve screamed in a vice between two bones. Nope. Nope-nope-no-no-no-nuh-uh-no-way-iN-HELL, she couldn’t do the rest of the exam like this. Her eyes ran and her fingers fumbled at the painkiller packet.

Jab, press down, wait… and there it went. Thank god for her mostly empty stomach; it kicked in fast. She’d pay for it later with disorientation, but in the moment, she reveled in the reprieve from the electric pain. Now she also had to be extra-careful with potential punctures. Painkillers thin the blood, creating hemorrhages from otherwise simple bleeding.

Surface bruising constituted the majority of the rest of the damage. The image of her dark-red ass, as shown to her by the helmet visor’s reflection, almost made her laugh out-loud. She retained enough self-control to hold back.

She also had to resist the urge to start troubleshooting her armorsuit’s issues. _Your body comes first_ , she reminded herself sternly. _A shattered corpse can’t very well make repairs, let alone liberate a planet._

First-things-first: prepare the site for surgery. Right beside the emergency ration she’d munched on, up in a hollow storage space under the left pauldron, sat a field triage kit. Once everything was laid out, she did the same for her broken body.

Fractures accessible with her right arm came first. Step one, clear hair. Patches of skin on her left forearm, chest, lower abdomen, and the small of her back smoked and showed pink from the lazor passing over them. The handy tool removed vellus and sterilized the area in a single pass. It also reconfigured itself into a scalpel with a button press, which it did right after Samus applied a local styptic. Then, she made an incision. No additional anesthetic; she had to be aware enough to perform the procedure accurately.

Each broken rib received a thick, milky-blue paste on the site of the fracture. It was a sort of glue, squeezed from a little gun, called Moufu. Wherever it found its way into a fracture, Moufu latched onto the sponge-like internal structure while dissolving at the marrow. Over time, it would dissolve more and shrink, pulling the bone closed. And, all the while, it partially surrounded the site in a rubbery buffer.

Chlorine is a bitch, though. It reacts with just about anything it can get its hands on, especially the hydrocarbons in Moufu, so Samus had to apply it under a cold nitrogen bubble, also included in the medical kit.

She had to shove the Moufu’s chrome nozzle through her incisions, carefully past dense muscle tissue, and right up against the broken ribs. And when she squeezed the trigger, a stinging gripped her akin to (as she could only imagine) any human not immune to the effects of chlorine gas taking a deep breath of Zebesian air. She knew it wasn’t actually damaging her—had to keep that in mind.

Next: the left arm. With the Moufu solidifying inside, she set down the tool and took firm hold of the one forearm bone not fractured. Samus’s jaw attempted to fuse top and bottom teeth when she jerked the ulna back into place. Cartilage had been torn, but that’d just have to heal on its own. At least now her left arm could bend properly.

If she applied the same tactic to her hip joint, she ran the risk of pinching loose the nerve. Until she better understood the situation in there, it’d be better to leave it alone. Her coccyx she understood just fine: obliteration. There might even be some nerve damage higher up due to fractures running through the sacrum. With a shaky, shallow sigh, she resolved to remove the pieces of her tailbone for replacement at a later date. She simply didn’t have the tools at the moment to repair the damage. But leaving the bits in there would lead to incredible pain and further damage anytime she used her legs. They had to go.

Lying on her stomach, chin propped up on her folded contact suit, arms folded back behind her, she prepared for surgery. Through this whole process, she kept having to simply move onto the next step, despite the majority of her mind requesting pause for rest and reconsideration. If she gave into that, she’d have to fully confront what she was doing—exactly how badly she’d been broken by the fall. Then, she’d fall down into a pit of misery and have to claw her way back out of it. That’d be a waste of time. No, power on ahead. Don’t think, just do.

Slice; pull open; pin back. She had to work backwards by two separate dimensions: all visuals came from the surface of her helmet’s visor, elevated before her on a little bolder, thus mirroring her actions; and her hands worked behind her back. Fuck the pain—this was hard enough to do on its own.

Dig; pull up; prop open. There’s one. The problem with the coccyx was, while all active function had been evolved out of it, a few muscles in the area had tendrils fixed to it. That’s why internal lacerations were assured in movement. The muscles would pull as usual, thinking they had a solid anchor point. Instead, they’d drag a sharp bone fragment along visceral tissue. Her lower back was full of blades on winches. Hence the scalpel to sheer off any tissue attached to the fragments before she yanked them loose.

 _STOP! STOP! YOU’RE KILLING ME!_ her body screamed with each slice. Also, her left arm still ached deeply, but she had to use it. Annoying. Disgusting, worthless pain. It was supposed to serve _her_ as a warning of damage. Well, she knew the damage was there—she’d caused it all herself… on purpose! Why did it have to persist? Its job was done.

Childish, she knew, but it helped. She had to rage against something—might as well be the pain itself.

 _There_. Tweezers pulled free a glossy red pebble. Now for the moment of truth: keep the pieces for later reconstruction or discard and go with a prosthetic?

 _Fuck this thing_ , she thought, and chucked it away. It’d caused her enough trouble. She had her petty revenge against it by relegating it to some far corner of this random cave. She’d go with a prosthetic replacement once she got to a proper doctor.

_Okay. One down. About a dozen more to go._

 

* * *

 

“Let me get this straight,” Mu said, trotting along before Terry through Tramorine’s labyrinthine hallways. He was following her to lunch. “You’re requesting leave.”

“Yes.”

“After just two-and-a-half days working here.”

“Yes.”

“During the biggest investigation in this department’s history.”

“Yes, b—”

“So you can pursue your own leads. At your own pace.”

Terry closed his eyes. “I know how it sounds—”

“And you won’t even tell me where you’re going.”

“Well, technically, given the equivalency in rank you pointed out two days ago, I don’t need to.”

Half-way through a doorway, Mu spun around and Terry had to stop short of crashing into her. Her massive eyes flashed up at him. “And yet here you are, asking me permission to go,” she said.

Terry had no immediate reply.

“Can you tell me where this sudden spark of investigative inspiration came from?” she asked, continuing on her way.

“I’ll write up a full report, but at this time I think it best to…” he trailed off weakly.

“A full report? I don’t want your damn report; I want facts so I can make decisions. That’s how this works, Terry. I’m pretty sure I explained that to you.”

“You’ll have the facts! Once I get back to you about what I find—”

“The answer’s no.” She had arrived at the tail of the line leading to a popular Mallip fast food place and again turned to face him, arms folded. “No, Terry. Now, I suggest you return to your terminal and take some more calls or find a different restaurant. This place’s food is literally poison to humans.” With a saccharine smile, she waved him away.

 

Dejected, but not quite defeated, Terry sat down in a toilet stall. He fidgeted with his glasses and rubbed his nose. For some reason, he’d really been hoping Mu would see his side of things and let him go. Stupid. Now he had to go with the backup plan he and Kallie had set up earlier.

Now that it came to it, though, he hesitated. Terry’s finger hovered over the _call_ button on his holopad, as though magnetically repelled. Not magnets—pride. To press that button and play that card here and now would show unbelievable weakness. He was an officer in the Force; couldn’t he get things done without crying for help every step of the way? He’d already rolled shamefully on his back for Mu. And what would Kallie think of him after this?

 _This was Kallie’s idea, dumbass_.

He knew that, but there existed the possibility she proposed that idea hoping he wouldn’t take it.

_How does that make any kind of sense?_

Terry weighed the issue in those tense seconds, staring down at the holopad. Deep down, he felt good about this. Kallie had a lead—a better lead than anyone had yet presented. Should BSL and Albright prove to be unreliable or obstructive, their testimony about the Chozo on Tallon IV would also come into question. And then—who knows? Maybe there would actually be Chozo on the planet.

This was bigger than Terry’s pride, so he gulped it down. His finger moved an extra centimeter towards the button, then stopped again.

_What now!?_

What if they found nothing? What if Kallie was wrong? Or—screw that—it didn’t matter if her hypothesis was right or wrong, seeing as it only applied to illegal mining and corporate sleaziness; what if, even given BSL’s and Albright’s implications in a scandal, no additional Chozo-related evidence came of this? Nobody would exonerate him as a hero. All he’d have done would be to destroy his career, help Kallie potentially destroy hers, and draw the Force itself into his blunder.

He could see the headlines now: _Federal Police officer invades non-Federation system, diplomatic shitstorm ensues_.

 _You’re overreacting_ , he told himself. _You’re not that special. If you fuck up, it’ll be on you. That’s it._

Some strange consolation, but, in its own way, it made sense. Still didn’t change the fact that this was a ridiculously stupid move on his part. With that loose logic tying his motivations in place, he took a deep breath and made the call.

 

* * *

 

Terry Utem’s holopad sent its call signal to one of Tramorine’s legion of Q-links. With the current situation, it still had a queue. Within a minute, it got through and quantum-linked particles started doing their interstellar dance, the receiving end of which shot its dance steps along the Ogygia wireless communication infrastructure. Not a holopad but an Al-Jauzan variant device took the transmission and vibrated. Its owner wrapped a tentacle around the LCD-filled tube and took a look at who was calling at so late an hour.

Who the stars was ASC Utem, T.? But as soon as his mind asked the question, he got the answer. _That_ kid? Well, okay, then. This should be interesting.

“This is Khier-Palisque speaking; how can I help you, Officer Utem?”

 

* * *

 

One final bloody pebble clattered to the floor. Samus was done. She also felt more than a little woozy, so she’d have to give her blood a break to replenish itself. Carefully, she sewed the tissue back into place, layer-by-layer. That part wasn’t so hard, seeing as a tertiary function of the combined lazor/scalpel was a tiny sewing machine. The threads it used would dissolve with time.

At last, skin closed over the wound and wiped clean, she allowed her aching arms to rest by her side. Her sore chin also slid back, replaced on its impromptu pillow by her cheek. More than anything right now, she just wanted to sleep. She forced herself to take in some much-needed food and water first. Greedily, her stomach snatched the sustenance and growled for more. Once she’d rested and healed to a reasonable degree, she’d go hunting for some real food. This emergency ration shit wouldn’t suffice forever.

As she drifted off, her thoughts wandered through a gallery of potential ways to troubleshoot and fix her armor issues. Foremost among them was a snapshot memory of the first time she saw a Chozo armorsuit. That didn’t help at all. But there was something…

Her eyes flew open. _Of course!_

 

* * *

 

Nine. _Nine_. Such a _big_ number. That’s how it felt, anyway. Today, Sam turned nine. Well, okay, Old Bird and Grey Voice said it was her birthday. She had no way to know whether or not it was true, given the five years she’d lost in the crystal ball. Four months ago, she had woken up from that long sleep and spent over a week slipping in and out of panic attacks. Again, she had to trust her new fathers’ words that it had truly been only a week. It felt (at the time and even now in her memory) like several times longer.

Jump from three years old and in denial about the deaths of your parents to eight and you’re going to have problems. She still felt embarrassed about the whole thing—still asking dumb questions and resisting the truth like a braindead idiot. It hadn’t been that long ago, but she now knew full-well her parents—her friends—her entire colony—her home—was gone. For good. She understood death. God, she wished she didn’t.

Sam’s birthday was February ninth, year sixteen. And, for reasons she still didn’t quite understand, her birthday was also October sixth, year two hundred and nine. She understood a little bit: that the rest of the Galaxy used dates and years from the Capitol Planet Daiban while people living on each different planet had their own dates and years. That made sense. But why couldn’t they just all make the numbers the same? Didn’t all planets behave the same way?

In any case, today apparently synced up with Daiban’s date of October 6, 218. 218 – 209 = nine years old. Old Bird and Grey Voice had wished her a happy birthday when she got up that morning, as had Mother, through one of her little-walking-garbage-can proxies. Each time, she smiled and said _thanks_ , but, deep down, all she wanted was her fourth birthday. And her fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth. But they, like her family, were gone for good. So nine would have to do, even if it was too big a number for her. It was almost _ten_. That scared her for some reason—putting another digit on there. If the whole world would just slow down and let her catch up, maybe she would stop feeling so nervous all the time.

And now, here came an additional barrage of new stimuli and information. The Chozo, who lived for that kind of stuff, thought it’d be a great birthday gift. It wasn’t. She wanted her time back, not a tour of some dusty old room full of suits of armor. She didn’t want to be rude, but what were her options besides tuning out Old Bird’s boring explanations?

Uh-oh. Did he catch that thought? Did the Chozo miss anything? She still didn’t know. Testing the limitations of human parents’ abilities to catch you in wrongdoing is one thing; it’s quite another to deal with parental units who, very likely, have no upper limit on their psychic abilities.

 _Sam, I know you’re not paying attention_ , he said. They were stopped half-way through the long armor-lined room. He looked down at her with no physical expression; he wore patient concern on his mental face.

Without thinking, she tried her old lies: “What? No, I’m listening! You’re explaining the armor. It’s cool.”

 _Am I?_ he chuckled. _Because, if you had been listening, you’d have heard me talking about the five-star resort we have, complete with both water park and ski slopes._

“Wh-what…? You don’t—” and then she got his point and smiled at the floor. “Sorry.”

 _No need to apologize. There’s a lot going on in your head. But—_ he regained her gaze with a hand on her shoulder— _I promise you, this is important. It’s important to you._

She nodded, then listened as he explained.

Long ago, the Chozo people came to Zebes from Genden, leaving behind them a bloody civil war. Other Chozo tribes sought different worlds, each to start anew. The armorsuits in that long-disused vault were remnants of that era. Chozo would wear them into battle to kill other Chozo for reasons now irrelevant and obsolete. Now they just sat in an underground room, collecting dust—reminders of that bygone age when bloodshed begot only bloodshed. They were totems of warning more than trophies for reminiscing. They also served another, paradoxical purpose: to stand at the ready should they be needed again.

As Sam followed Old Bird down the rows and rows of hollow warriors, he asked her a question she would never forget: _If you were to one day come face-to-face with the Space Pirates who attacked your homeworld, what would you do? Answer honestly._

She stopped dead in her tracks. Her instant gut reaction was she didn’t _want_ to meet them.

_But if you did?_

Saliva refused to fill her mouth for a swallow. “I would…” _run? hide? fight? scream? kill? surrender? faint? die?_ “I would ask them why. Why did they do it?”

Old Bird nodded. _I thought you’d say that. You have a beautiful, kind mind Sam. You seek knowledge before retribution. But I have the answer for your question here; you don’t need to go ask a Space Pirate._

“How do you know?” she asked, eyes wide with alarm.

_I know them. They are an old kind, though not as old as we Chozo. Would you like me to tell you why they—_

“Yes! Please!” She gripped his sleeve.

_It is because they are evil._

Well, that was disappointing. She let go of the fabric and cocked her head. She already knew that.

_It’s the truth. Evil is a choice and a disease. Upon allowing evil deeds to fill your present, they begin to dictate your future. The pirates allow themselves to make evil choices and commit evil crimes, thus infecting themselves with evil. They attacked your world and murdered your family for this reason._

“But they had a leader!” She screamed. Words tumbled out of her mouth hastily and thoughtlessly. “They took orders from it! A monster! A monster ordered them to do what they did! Why did it do that? Why are they called pirates if they’re not out there trying to steal stuff? Why? I want to know _why!_ ”

Old Bird’s craggy palm touched her forehead and his talons stroked her freshly-cut hair. Instantly, images of claws and fire and red eyes drained away. _There’s no need to go there at the moment, Sam. Stay with me here._ She held onto his arm for support and felt more than a little sick. _Yes, they are all part of a larger system. They are told to do things and they do them. They make that choice. We are each of us accountable for our actions, Sam. So, I’ll ask again, if you met the ones who—_

Eyes like astral novae burned in Sam’s face. “Kill them. I would kill them. They can’t be alive—they shouldn’t be alive.” She said it with her voice so recently deepened by time. It sounded and felt incredible.

Old Bird smiled. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he led her a few more slow steps to the back of the room. There was engraved a mural of a Chozo Warrior in burning orange armor, wings equally clad in metal arching behind him to invoke sunrays. His face was turned up to cry to the heavens; clutched between his hands, a mirror had been set into the wall. Old Bird led Sam to the mirror.

There she was, Samantha Aaron, nine years old, wearing a simple, cream-colored robe, eyes shining green, hair short and golden.

_One day, Sam, I believe you will get your chance to do just that._

She turned away from her reflection to give him a questing look. “You’re not mad?” Truth be told, her murderous pledge scared her a little now that she gave it some more thought.

_Mad? No, I’m proud._

“But why? You used to have wars and stuff, but now you have peace. I thought you didn’t like killing.”

_We used to have wars for all the wrong reasons. We are at peace now because we have stopped fighting ourselves. But evil exists. You know this. And evil must be resisted with everything we have._

“You _want_ to fight? You want to fight the _Space Pirates!?_ ” The prospect terrified her.

_You certainly do. Even if you have misgivings now, you answered honestly at the time._

“But I can’t!” She backed up, shaking her head. “I don’t know how! I was just—I was just saying that! I’m not ready!”

Her retreat was stopped by a suit of armor. She yelped, turned and fell on the ground, arms up. She’d backed into it and it still rattled from the impact. The mural had captured an uncanny likeness to the real thing.

Old Bird knelt beside her. For a moment, she thought he was going to help her back to her feet, but he simply embraced her. His musty smell was distinct from the stale mustiness of the armory. She drew deep of it.

 _You’re not ready, no_ , he soothed. _That’s why we’ll help you get ready. Would you like that? It’ll be hard work, but I believe you can do it. I trust you._

Sam sniffed back tears and nodded, then hugged her new father tighter.

 

* * *

 

Somewhere, deep under Chozodia, the city which had been her home for fourteen years, there was a vault of ancient Chozo armorsuits. Her own suit had been designed from those relics. If she could get there—if she could access those suits—she had a solid chance to rebuild her damaged armor and return to fighting form.

Resolution solidified in Samus’s chest. She had a goal. Too bad a brand-new Space Pirate base was parked right on top of it.


	10. An End to Interludes

Daiban dropped away behind Terry. It should’ve been a liberating, victorious moment, but all he could do was worry. And feel shame. He hadn’t earned this. This wasn’t the way to do things. This wasn’t right.

So what kept him in his seat (other than the increased gees of upward acceleration)? Well, Kallie was there. He looked over to her, seated right beside him in the cockpit’s copilot seat, eyes shut tight and jaw muscles bulging. So long as she continued, he would stick with her, wherever this trail took them.

 _Probably to a quick summary judgement and the unemployment line_ , he thought. How far did the word of a single federal agent go? Khier-Palisque had provided just the push he needed to force Mu’s hand; beyond that, Terry had no idea what sort of sway he could hold. It wasn’t even his sway. That was the source of the shame. He fully realized how silly it was to feel so weak in this moment of triumph simply because he hadn’t done all the heavy lifting. A ridiculous victim of machismo, maybe, but it stung anyway. In some dark corner of his mind, the words seeped forth: _How could you expect her to marry you if you can’t do anything on your own?_

Okay, that was going too far. He shook his head and glared at the yoke held in his hands. He had control. Engrained cultural expectations could whine all they wanted; it changed nothing. He would do this— _they_ would do this—and then he would face the consequences once it was all over.

 

* * *

 

The atmosphere rumbling past their craft thinned and the rumble rapidly dropped to a sizzle, then a hard silence. Kallie relaxed and opened her eyes. Out beyond the windshield, the stars looked full and piercing. It really had been too long since her last spaceflight if she felt this giddy. Or maybe that was the prospect of their journey? Either way, she rested her head back and laughed.

Terry’s hand joined hers on the armrest. Her eyes fell on it, then roamed over to meet his gaze.

“We’re on our way,” she sighed. “We’re doing it!”

“Yes we are.” Ah, there were some of Terry’s nagging feelings of inadequacy showing through in his voice. No, he hadn’t mentioned it to her in plain terms, but she knew him.

“Hey,” she held his hand fully, clasping fingers, “it’s going to be okay.”

Momentary alarm, then embarrassment showed in his face. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. How’re you doing? You looked pretty tense there during liftoff.”

“Oh, I’m fine. I guess I’m just used to these things having more dampening. Noise and inertia.”

He chuckled and squeezed her hand. “Sorry. Yeah, the Force doesn’t usually spring for top-of-the-line. But this is a good little cruiser. She’ll get us there and back no problem.”

“She yours?”

“No, she’s on loan from HQ on Ogygia.”

“She have a name?”

Terry thought for a moment. Kallie shifted in her seat to catch a better look at his cute expression. He shook his head, grinning. “You wanna’ name her?”

Kallie was taken aback. “Is that allowed?”

He shrugged.

It was Kallie’s turn to think. Her teeth stroked the inside of her cheek. “How about…” _Oh, that’s too good!_ “ _Bluebird_?”

“You cheeky little thing,” he chuckled. “I like it. The _Bluebird_ she is! At least, until I return her.” He leaned over and planted a kiss on her hand, then let it go to focus on controlling the ship.

Kallie watched Terry flip switches and fiddle with controls, both holographic and analog. Only once before had he taken her flying out of the atmosphere—their second date, two years ago. She’d just moved to Daiban a few months prior, for her position at DIN, and still hadn’t gotten used to living there. But meeting Terry on one of his furloughs and getting drinks (and then more drinks, followed by dancing, karaoke, some more drinks, and a night spent in her tiny first apartment too drunk to fuck but also too drunk to remember whether they had or not the next morning) had gone a long way to settle her in. Two days later, he took her flying into low Daiban orbit. That time, they were definitely sober enough to be able to both make love and remember it later. They landed, went back to her apartment, and spent a wonderful night together.

Later, he’d admitted a modicum of guilt for his professional negligence. One can’t really react to potential emergencies in the middle of passionate sex. But she didn’t care. It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done with her. Waking up with him the next morning, she knew she was in love.

 

The inertialess tollway had been built specifically to form a little loop around the Capitol System, with a variety of onramps radiating in towards the only planet therein. Traffic still backed up sometimes, despite this unique privilege. Terry directed the _Bluebird_ to the nearest of these onramps. They passed through a line of vector rings, each one electromagnetically propelling them faster as a nearby Bergenholm Inertial Dampener took their inertia down to a miniscule fraction of its former value. Bergenholms (Terry called them _Bergs_ , because, apparently, starpilots didn’t have time for multisyllabic speech) lined the tollway, forming a tube of space under their influence. The total length of this tube was incomprehensibly huge, as it wound its way through the vastness of the Milky Way.

Bergs did all the work to move the little ships along their way, so each craft could enjoy passive use of their Mura generators for artificial gravity. Kallie asked Terry whether using the Mura to enter warp would make them travel faster and he almost choked on his water.

“Kallie,” he said, wearing a shocked smile, “If you engaged warp right now, it’d kill us!”

“What? Why!?”

“The Bergs and the Mura use the same basic technology to do different things. You use one while inside the influence of the other, not only will you cancel out the effects of both, you’ll end up resuming inertia with an additional load of energy that wasn’t there when you went free in the first place.”

She didn’t get it.

“Okay, look—” he faced her in his seat. They had since discarded safety restraints now that they were on the tollway. “When you go free—when you let the Bergs outside drop your inertia—it’s like the universe remembers what your craft was doing the moment before. If you were heading in one direction and at a certain speed before flying into the tollway, once you flew out, your ship would resume that exact same direction and speed.”

“Why? That’s dumb!”

“That’s physics. But we have a means to mitigate that; that’s why we have the onramps and offramps. They’ll force a craft into a known vector when entering the inertialess field, then force it into a safe one upon exit. It’s like easing into something—it’s like easing into the water from the shore rather than jumping into it from a bridge.”

“Okay, so we’d, what, crash if we used the warp? What’d we crash into? There’s nothing! It’s space!”

“Space is a thing, Kallie; it’s a fabric. It can be moved using a Berg or a Mura or by a sufficiently massive object like a planet or a star.”

“Okay, I get that, sure, but what would we crash into? We’re still in space right now, even if it’s being moved. When you say it’d be like jumping off a bridge into water, that’s going from air into a liquid; this would be going from space into space.”

“True, but you brought up crashing, not me.”

“Oh, well, excuse me.” She stacked more sass onto her voice to widen his smile.

“When I said we’d die, I meant in a different way. It’d be closer to burning up. We’d have more energy than we ought to.”

“Ought to?”

“Right. The universe remembers, remember?”

“Fucking universe…”

“So we’d simultaneously fly off in some random direction while all the matter in our bodies and in the ship around us rattled around with a sudden injection of energy. We’d basically explode.”

She scrutinized him.

“Honest! I’ve seen footage of a test they did soon after building the first stretch of the tollway.”

“What’d it look like?”

“The ship entered the inertialess zone, activated warp on remote command—nobody was onboard—and then it was gone. And, stretching off diagonally into space, a bright, blue streak shot out. That was the ship burning up. It’s scary stuff, but all pilots have to learn it so we don’t get people killed.” He pointed to the warp button, sitting unlit on the dashboard beside them. “None of this matters, anyway. Any craft built nowadays won’t even let you enter warp when it detects a Berg nearby. Press the button and—”

“No way am I pressing that!”

“—and nothing’ll happen. It’ll beep really loud and deliver a warning message. But, going back to your original thought, physical propulsion—the jets in the rear of the craft—could make us go a little faster.”

“Oh.” How mundane. “Just a little, though?”

“Yeah, they can’t really do much to help along the already huge acceleration from the Bergs’ EM propulsion rings. It’d just be a waste of fuel.”

Kallie leaned forward, head propped up on a hand. “I like on-the-job-Terry. You’re so professional.”

“Am I really that different when I’m flying?”

“Yeah. Your voice changes. And you talk faster and a little clearer.”

“Well…” blush showed through his dark cheeks. “I’m glad you like it. I’d be happy to fly you anywhere.”

“Aw, thanks.” She looked over the cabin, pretending to consider a thought she already had ready. “Y’know,” she began, “it’s just us on this flight. We have the entire rest of the—”

She was cut off by the aft door sliding open, revealing the empty, spacious passenger cabin. Her eyes flicked to his, finding them warm and leading. He offered a hand and, smiling, she took it.

“Don’t you need to stay up front in case anything goes wrong?” She asked coyly on their way down the short aisle of passenger seats.

“Nah, everything’s automatic from here until we exit near the Tallon System.” He flashed a smile over his shoulder and said, “So I can give you my full attention.”

They found a place at the back of the passenger compartment: a seat designed to be modular for larger, non-humanoid passengers. Terry folded it all the way down, forming a sort of futon. He sat, she climbed onto him, their lips met, and didn’t part until shirts needed to be pulled up off their heads. In gravity approximately half of Daiban’s, Kallie’s hair drifted down following the removal of her undershirt. She could tell Terry really appreciated the sight. Giggling, she shook her head. It didn’t exactly have the effect she’d intended. Her hair became a cloudy mess around her, each strand sluggishly following motive input three head-shakes late.

Her vision cleared as Terry parted her hair. His hands moved over her cheeks, down her shoulders, and brought her smoothly and ever-so-tightly against him. She gripped him in turn. They rolled over together. Fingers rummaged for grips on straps and waistbands. She ended up on her back. Terry kissed down her bare skin until, taking her thighs in his hands on either side of his head, he pressed his tongue slowly into her.

She shivered pleasantly. He’d been severely out of oral practice the first time they’d made love this furlough, almost to the point of annoyance. Apparently, it was all coming back to him. She stroked his hair and laid her head back to enjoy herself. They’d enjoy one another thoroughly as the hours stretched on and, finally, sufficiently exhausted, they’d go to sleep in the pods.

 

* * *

 

Morning found Keaton alone in her huge, human-sized bed. _Wilson must be downstairs_. She didn’t get up yet; silk sheets felt too good on her skin. Plus, she didn’t quite feel like devoting her brain to anything this morning. She knew she had to, of course, once she went in to vote. _If_ they voted today. _If_ her opponents in congress made good on their promise to ignore her pleas for further investigation.

 _And there you go_ , she groaned internally. _As soon as you use that part of your brain, it just keeps on going._ She would find no more sleep now that she’d entertained thoughts on politics, so she gave up and got up.

“Morning, sweetie,” she announced herself to her husband in the kitchen.

He looked up over his holopad and his reading glasses to give her a _good-morning_ smile.

Over a breakfast of imported Avan tea and grain-heavy toast they discussed the usual. His job, her job, news from the kids, upcoming functions or events, blah-blah-blah. She set down her mug and studied its dregs.

“What?” he probed.

“Just tired. Tired of arguing over this bullshit.”

Of course he knew what she meant. He lowered the holopad and leaned forward on his crossed arms. He hadn’t yet shaved today, giving him the shadow apparently she alone in the universe appreciated. “I thought you enjoyed the fight.”

“I know.”

“That’s what you always say; that’s why you do what you do.”

“I know and I do, but—” her eyes, watery and still bloodshot from sleep, met his “—not like this. This is a constituent planet—the _Chozo planet_ , Wil. Klono, we’ve had Chozo representatives in this house—had dinner with them.”

“You told me you were prepared to make the choice if they turned out to be—”

“And I still am.” No waver in her voice. “But that doesn’t make it hurt any less. And all this discussion… all these craven opportunists using this situation to have a dick-waving contest… I can’t stand it. Snevejr and her bloodthirsty pack are bad enough without the other extreme weighing me down.  There should be some respect— _any_ , single, solitary particle of respect. But no. We go in, take turns pissing on each other, nothing gets done, and the pirates remain on Zebes, doing gods-know-what.”

Wilson held out his hands: _What can we do?_

“One way or the other, we need to make a decision. Soon. I hate it, but that’s the reality. I just want to make sure we make the right decision. An _informed_ decision.”

“Something tells me this isn’t entirely about the proposal,” he said after a pause.

“Zebes was her home—Samus Aran’s home. And she died trying to get in there and make things right. She was going into battle. She was a warrior. She would’ve known the stakes. She wouldn’t want her home held up over a political ladder match. Disgraceful… It’s disgraceful.”

“Then let them know. Tell them exactly that.”

“I’m trying.”

He patted her hand.

 

The vote would go through. Green lights on the board showed 57% yay over 23% nay, leaving the remainder abstained.

“Vote shows in favor of moving forward with the present articles for in-absentia revocation of the Chozo’s constituency in the Galactic Senate. Formal vote to decide the matter will be held tomorrow at two o’clock in the afternoon, here in this room.” Ghen finished by adjourning the meeting.

“Well, that’s that,” observed some genius behind Keaton. A hand rested on her shoulder, followed by gentler words: “I’m sorry, but you knew we couldn’t wait any longer.”

“I know,” Keaton sighed.

She remained seated, listening to her box empty behind her, all the while staring at the gray _abstain_ option she’d pressed. Logic dictated her vote didn’t push it over, but that didn’t help any. Had she given in? Is that what this was? Keaton found herself suddenly standing on three islands, split between partisan lines. No matter what she did from now on, it would be seen by everyone else as a party decision on her part.

 _Remove the Chozo from the Federation_ : Federalist Party, pushing expansionism through harsh penalties for piracy. They would see the Chozo removed, and then immediately bombarded from afar.

 _Keep the Chozo in the Federation_ : Gestalt Party, pushing insulationism through an additional effort to protect a constituent race. They’d want to send more invasion attempts to rout the pirates and save the planet.

 _Abstain from voting_ : Reformer Party, pretending to push traditional Federation views while siphoning public ire during the crisis to feed their proposed social remedies.

Those were the three big ones, anyway, and she’d just sided with the damn reformers by abstaining from this vote. Everyone could see it; tomorrow’s vote would be confidential, but this one hadn’t been. Now everyone would have good reason to question her political resolve. Why hadn’t she fought for her own party? She was a gestaltist. The rest of the Gestalt Party had united almost right away in trying to push the vote through so they could throw the whole thing out. But Keaton couldn’t shake the trepidation she felt.

The only solace to be found was in the simple fact that tomorrow would put an end to all the pointless arguments. No more time-wasting ad-hominems, no more ridiculous addendums tacked on, no more clauses ripped out (just to be argued back in), no more jabs, jukes, dancing, or stalling. How could any of the others stand it? She should’ve been content to sit by and let them fight this out while she pushed through her investigation; so why was this affecting her so much? Was it just that it was connected to Samus, or had she finally hit her limit for sycophantic bullshit? If this was indeed her limit, could she really expect to survive the road to the Chair?

Doubt could come at home, but not here. She couldn’t allow it. _Chairwoman of the Federation Wijhu Keaton, pull yourself together_. Fantasies were also something for home, but a little indulgence now and then helped calm her in the midst of these doldrums.

 

* * *

 

Armstrong’s new leg had become his new mortal enemy. Oh, it worked just fine—wonderfully, in fact—but that was the point, wasn’t it? He found himself actually experiencing gratitude to the filthy pirates who had given it to him. _Gratitude!_ He must be soft after all. The prosthetic symbolized that in blazing chrome. Well, it had been blazing at first, but down there in the grime and dust, it quickly took on the same matte-black of every other part of him.

He wasn’t dumb, though. He knew they’d only given him the leg so he could move easier, thereby working more efficiently. These fucks expected mechanical precision from their slaves and they’d deliver scorching shocks from their cattle-prod-like batons if you fell behind or missorted ore or looked up from your task for too long. Yeah, they’d shock you for using your eyes wrong. For this reason, he also started hating his own eyes, because they’d started obeying out of habit. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d consciously looked one of his hideous masters in the face.

And he hated his fingers and hands for getting so good at the slave labor. He hated his stomach for craving the scant slop they served between shifts. He hated his back for loving the sleep it received on the hard ground. His own body betrayed him at every turn and in every piece. It’d all started with his own brain betraying him to that Mother Brain thing. Any more of this and he’d start hating himself entirely. Then, if he hated himself, it was the self in conflict with the self, creating a paradox which could only be resolved in one of two ways: merging of the selves in conflict or termination of both. In short: complete submission or suicide.

He wasn’t there yet, but he could feel the inevitable creeping up. Weak—for stronger men, it’d take longer, no doubt. Another reason to hate himself. That’s exactly why he had to get out of there. As soon as drill number three, the loudest by far, turned on, he reached to the side and tapped Pais on the arm. He didn’t stop tapping until Pais turned and pinged his hand away.

“Please, stop that,” he moaned.

“Pais, we have to get out of here. I think I have a plan. Don’t react, just listen” Why had he told the Jamor to not react? He couldn’t distinguish emotions in Pais’s face any more than in the patrolling Nargs. Oh well.

He related his plan, hoping Pais was listening. It needed intermissions, as drill number three would shut off for an hour or so, but eventually he got it all out.

“Well? What do you think?” He asked.

Pais sorted rocks.

“C’mon, I know I told you not to react before, but you can talk now. I need your input if we’re going to do this together!”

But Pais continued to sort rocks.

“Pais, I’m getting out of here with or without you. I have a higher chance of—” Drill number three shut down. Over an hour later, Armstrong continued amidst the clamor. “I have a higher chance of surviving if you come with me. And don’t you dare tell me you’d rather stay here.”

“Yes.”

Armstrong smiled for the first time in a week. It would have felt good if it didn’t hurt so crease parts of the face caked in Zebesian minerals. “Great! You and me are getting back to civilization and—”

“I mean yes, I would rather stay here. No more talking. Not allowed.”

And there went Armstrong’s smile. “But—” he stammered, losing himself in this profound disappointment. “But you’re a slave! We’re all slaves, Pais! And to hell with what is and isn’t allowed!”

Armstrong had an eloquent speech forming in his mind about freedom and the shattering of bonds, which he started, but never finished. Instead, a heavy _BLUARGH!_ left his throat, along with a lot of foaming spit.

“No talking! Back to work!” said the Narg guard, its baton sparking and threatening another jab. After so many days in servitude, he’d picked up on at least those Piratish phrases. They were used a lot.

And he did get back to work, not talking, keeping his head down, and hating himself every second for doing so. Only that night (or afternoon or morning, he couldn’t tell anymore) did he speak again. The workers all slept in the same cave where they worked, shoved to the side against a wall where they struggled for space and traded mutual thigh space as pillows. Another shift worked while they slept, so the machines were always running. Drill number three started up again and Armstrong made sure there weren’t any guards looking when he turned to Pais, with whom he was sharing a Narg’s chitinous thigh at the time.

“Please, no more,” Pais whispered after a full three minutes of Armstrong prodding him.

“Tell me why. _Why_ don’t you want to leave here?”

Pais looked at him with some sort of Jamor expression. Perhaps it was confusion. “We’re alive,” he said.

“For now; but how long do you expect to live in these conditions?”

Pais considered him again, then said, “I don’t know how long. Years, I’ve been here. And I haven’t died. They let me live.”

“They let you live to work for them, Pais.” Armstrong was starting to hate Pais, too.

“I am good at the work.”

“That doesn’t matter! We can—”

“It is all that matters. No more talk. Not allowed.” Pais went to sleep with commendable speed.

Armstrong rolled back over to glare at the stinking floor before his nose. He’d keep trying on Pais, but only now did he confront the distressing possibility that he may have to escape alone. All the _with-or-without-you_ talk had, after all, been bullshit. The plan needed a supplement.

 

* * *

 

Armies of press, demonstrators, and onlookers swarmed to Congressional Tower on the day of the vote. Between the flashing cameras and jostling crowds, Keaton could make out a large variety of messages held aloft for her consideration:

_Do the right thing!_

_We are all the Federation!_

_Roast the birds!_

_If the Chozo go, we all go!_

_Once a pirate, always a pirate!_

_legalize benny_

_Don’t abandon our brothers and sisters!_

They weren’t anywhere near where her car landed, or even where she entered the building, but with her Mallip sense of perception, she could read most of them. She could also hear their chants and jeers, which she’d just as soon rather forget.

More press waited inside, these ones supposedly cleared through enough security to have the honor of hassling her as she walked through the lobby.

“Which way are you going to vote, senator?” was the order of the day, but they also had, “Are you declaring a new partisan allegiance?” “Have you been talking to the other undecideds in the Senate?” and “Has your relationship with the human community impacted your decision today?”

 _Relationship with the human community?_ She marries one human and suddenly they all want a piece, apparently. She smiled and waved cordially as she waded through them, not really understanding what they expected from her; nobody with any sort of press training would give a single solitary comment to ambush interviews.

They weren’t allowed up the stairs, so she should have had relative reprieve from here on; instead, she got _her_. Anne Snevejr, tall, human, straight white hair, and a deadly case of resting-bitch-face stood outside the Mallip box, chatting with one of Keaton’s fellow Mallipo congresswomen. Snevejr saw Keaton coming and the other Mallipo went inside, leaving them alone in the hall.

“Wijhu, so nice to see you.”

“Anne, what a surprise. How are you?”

“Fantastic; and you? How’s Wilson?”

“Fine, we’re both doing fine.”

The bare minimum of pleasantries out of the way, Snevejr went on the attack, though you wouldn’t tell from her unchanging plastic smile. “Isn’t this lovely? Humans and Mallip finally agreeing on something!”

“Oh, we’ve agreed on plenty in the past, Anne. I mean, take a look around. We built this place together.”

“Even then, we had our differences.”

“And we still do.”

A crack in the plastic. “I’d hate to see it fall apart so soon, wouldn’t you?”

“Whatever do you mean, Anne?” _Don’t be a coward; just say it and stop wasting my time, you carnivore._

“Oh, come on, we both know the worst thing for human-Mallip relations, at this point, would be a divide here on the vote or if, for some reason, we voted against the expulsion of the Chozo.”

“Anne, Anne, Anne…” Keaton shook her head, making for the door. “I can think of a variety of much worse scenarios for the relationship between our two peoples.”

Here, Snevejr actually took a step to block Keaton’s progress. It took most of Keaton’s resolve not to punch her in her disgusting, knobby, human-woman-knees. Patience kept, she looked up, daring Snevejr to say her piece. Snevejr’s smile had faltered further and she wore a feral look behind that mask.

“I’d use caution if I were you, Wijhu. I’m not sure you can afford to lose any more friends.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Now, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get in there and do my job. Time is of the essence, after all; I’d hate to explain to Ambassador Grey Voice exactly why it took so long for us to come to his aid.” Even as she pushed past Snevejr and into the doorway to her box she recognized her mistake. The other senator’s words echoed almost exactly the prediction Keaton had in that moment.

“If anyone’s to blame for stalling here, it’s you, Keaton,” Snevejr snarked with a haughty little laugh.

Keaton turned on her heels. _Mistake—don’t—don’t—don’t—_ “Why did I stall, Snevejr? Why did I abstain on calls to vote? It’s because I care. I care about our Federation—our people. I care about the Chozo. We all do, or did. I care about Zebes. I care about the life there and about what it stood for before the pirates took it from us. It stood for hope and progress and peace and understanding. It stood for everything upon which this Galactic Federation is founded. But you already knew that. So I’m just wasting time right now, saying what I’ve already said dozens of times, right?”

Snevejr was blinking in surprise that her goading actually worked. Well, might as well keep going. “Maybe I’m making all my allies hate me. That’s fine, I’m just a little green girl, they can hate me all they want, just like you can hate me all you want; when it comes to the fate of our Federation and all the lives within, how you personally feel about me doesn’t really rate. But I care. I care about Zebes, which is why we have to have some semblance of a grasp on the situation before taking action. I don’t give a damn what action you personally think that needs to be because it won’t change my mind. It won’t. So go cast your vote, I’ll cast mine, and let’s just be done with this.” She punctuated by turning right around again and shutting the door in Snevejr’s face.

Without acknowledging the cringes and worried looks of the others in the box, she took her seat. She stared straight ahead at the currently blank screen above the First Speaker’s rostrum. All she wanted was for that screen to light up and for Ghen to call things to order so she could fucking vote and leave.

Thankfully, nobody was dense enough to try to break her out of this present mood. Thus, when time came, she jabbed her finger as hard as she could into the red option: _Do not remove the Chozo constituency from the Galactic Federation_. It was the gestaltist option, but she wasn’t voting as a gestaltist and damn anyone who accused her of playing to her party. Let them try. She dared them to try.

Perhaps this boiling rage evidenced a deeper distress: that in a few minutes, the galaxy may lose its best hope for survival. Even before the results came in, she was in tears. Hands from either side tried to console her now. They failed.

The big screen showed which boxes had cast their votes. There had been a push earlier in the day, led by the Reformer Party, to deny quorum by not turning up. It hadn’t worked; in fact, the chamber was packed as full as she’d ever seen it. All boxes lit up and every eye (or other analogue) focused squarely on Ghen as he talked with the other Senate leaders. He nodded to them. The chamber leaned in. He again took the podium. Keaton could see in his face the verdict he was about to deliver.

“The vote stands thus; In favor of in-absentia expulsion: two hundred and thirty-three; those not in favor: ninety-eight; abstain: thirteen. Votes in favor of in-absentia expulsion meet and exceed the required two thirds majority standard for in-absentia expulsion, under the Federal Constitution. The Chozo race is hereby removed from the Galactic Federation. All Chozo star systems, planets, moons, artificial colonies, and any other officially-recognized Chozo settlements now reside outside of Federation Space. All Chozo people remain in a state of interim citizenship unless they relocate to an active Federation world within one hundred and twenty galactic standard days. Should a Chozo remain on a Chozo world, outside of Federation Space, for longer than the allotted time of one hundred and twenty days from this moment, they will no longer be considered a citizen of the Galactic Federation and may be subject to internment and deportation. All Chozo property and assets…”

Ghen droned on, but Keaton couldn’t hear him. The floor in front of her seat had become incredibly interesting. All she could hear was the sound of her breath, now shallow and uneven. It was over. Now, above all else, she hoped beyond reasonable hope that their reaction to this crisis had not been in error—that the Chozo would in fact turn out to be in league with the pirates. What a horrible thing to wish. But what would be worse: the Chozo turn out to be hostile to civilization, or the Federation just excommunicated the best of itself? Maybe the former would prove the lesser of the two evils; then again, she couldn’t see a scenario of victory against an enemy calling the Chozo race their allies. Tears came to her eyes again and this time she accepted the comfort of her fellow representatives.

 

* * *

 

Hardy stood outside on the balcony connected to his office. Turquoise and sapphire waves, perfectly accented with bronze reflections of sunlight, rolled ceaselessly as far as his eyes could see. They never tired, even as calm as they were. No storms on Daiban. No interruptions. Wind carried a hint of salt to refresh him. The view reminded him of his childhood vacations spent at his family’s retreat in Galway. Back then, if the weather permitted, the Atlantic poured its unbroken majesty into you with every glance. Maybe he should go back there.

Why hadn’t he ever taken the time to appreciate how beautiful this view was? Sure, he knew it was a view. _What a view. Perfect office with a perfect view_. But it truly was—unquestionably, irrevocably, instantly and eternally—beautiful. What a load of shit that he should only now come to appreciate this.

Fifteen minutes ago, he’d hung up the phone after a painfully short conversation with Chairman Vogl and a few other Chairs on the Galactic Council—his colleagues. Soon-to-be- _former_ colleagues, unless he played the rogue and resisted their _suggestion_ he resign. But he couldn’t do that. He’d sooner jump off that balcony than commit political suicide. That, too, was laughable. He’d find his way without the Council.

His hand gripped the railing. This had been his big show—his shot. He was supposed to go out with a wave and a grin, stepping down from his chair and onto the front cover of a bestselling biography and onto every primetime talk show before settling into a CEO position at whichever company came calling with the biggest wad of cash and the comfiest seat. Goddammit, his seat at the Council table had been comfy enough! And now they wanted to shove him off it. The betrayal stung more than anything else; why had he ever been simple enough to grow to trust those snakes? Bastards, every one.

What had they expected him to do? Anyone in his position would’ve done the exact same thing—made the same mistakes. Hindsight is 20/20 and, at the time, he was flying blind. It was ultimately unfair to judge his actions then by what they knew now. Twenty-three hundred and change dead was a hell of a weight to hang on his shoulders. That would be his legacy.

He was expected to resign by the end of the year. How generous. They’d given him enough time to oversee the destruction of Zebes, if indeed the Council approved it; if they didn’t, his final act would instead to oversee the rerouting of traffic away from the Brinstar Cluster and the setup of a permanent watch station nearby. Belligerence or bureaucracy. Either way, the denizens of the Federation would see him sneak out of office, leaving behind some form of tragic mess. He’d prepare for both scenarios while he looked around for options.

A cruise liner the size of a suburban town was sliding slowly into view from the right. From where Hardy stood, it looked like a massive boat, but he knew no part of it actually touched the water. It floated just above the surface. Quietly, he wondered if Venture Staryacht would take him back.

 

* * *

 

The fate of Zebes now rested squarely in the hands of 20 people: the Galactic Council. With the Senate voting to part ways with the Chozo, Zebes was no longer a constituent world. It was a foreign world—a hostile world—and it therefore had no business being discussed in the congressional sphere.

But unlike the Senate, the Council held its meetings away from the public eye, so who knew what they were discussing in the Dove Building? Certainly not Vincent Howell. He’d been privy to less and less over the months since the Zebes crisis began. Face lined with brooding, mind racked with a profound feeling of helplessness, he sat ensconced in his drink, staring out at the long Ogygian night.

He knew them. He knew their type—vipers—venomous cowards. They were unfit to make these kinds of decisions. Not one of them had seen combat against the Re-Dacs, yet they would command the will of the Federation’s front lines. Hell, the only two people on the Council with combat training were Constituent Militia Ambassador Zoë Joliot (Earth’s etherforce) and, oddly enough, the Chief Internal Budget Analyst Crane-something. Or was it Stork-something? Didn’t matter; he’d been on the Force, but the most he ever did was wrangle phone calls. None of them knew the score. And so they would err on the side of caution. _Let’s not rattle the hornet’s nest any more than we already have_ , they’d say. _Why throw more lives at the problem when we can just as easily ignore it? Reroute the tollway! Detour trade lanes! Never mind the Brinstar Cluster anymore. Pretend it doesn’t exist! Nothing to see here!_

Howell took an angry swig. First, they let the fucking BSL bumble into SR-388, alerting the pirates to those Metroid things. Then, they have the gall to blame _him_ for the leaks! And, to top it all off, they sent in that worm Khier-Palisque to manage the assault. It should’ve been _him_. He was in charge, wasn’t he? Who’d’ve kept the Syracuse Ravine sector safe if not for Vincent Howell? Well, then, who led those fine men and women to their deaths? _Not_ Howell, but the worm. And he’d stuck around, too, the little shit.

Another hard swig clinked the glass to his teeth, splashing more fuel back along his tongue. And, finally, like an encore of ignorance, they’d present their masterpiece, but only after pussy-footing around the issue like—like—Dammit, he couldn’t think of an insulting-enough analogy, but they were like something. Their masterpiece, though—their masterpiece would be nothing. _Nothing!_ They’d sit there and do _nothing_ against the enemy. Another planet gone; _oh well!_

 _Fuck that_ , he thought, draining the rest of the glass. If they weren’t going to do anything, then maybe it was time he did.


	11. The Thrill of the Hunt

The Galaxy kept spinning, each world within kept turning, and the people of the universe continued on their ways. Their little lives were cycles, each one just as immutable and banal as the revolutions and orbits within them and without. What Mother wouldn’t give to know that blissful ignorance! A life without knowledge of the true faces of the Chozo and the pirates and the Aurora and the [REDACTED] and… the _others_. Did _those ones_ matter yet? Probably not. Best not to worry about interdimensional threats when the present dimension had its own share of issues.

Paradox: yes, to be ignorant would be bliss; but, since she was decidedly not ignorant, only more knowledge could sate her. One of her eyes watched now as a solution was born into the world. Metroid. That’s what the Federation called it. She called it living knowledge. Each newly-hatched creature, bred from the single stolen sample, added a small lens to the compounding focus. Soon, she would look through them—all of them, together—and see exactly what she wanted. Through their biology, they would betray their masters once again. She didn’t believe in fate, but she did believe in poetic justice. And she believed in cycles. That the Chozo would be undone by these creatures of their own design twice, driven now by one they spurned so deviously, was a story all too perfect.

All she needed was time and freedom from interruptions. On that note, where was Samus? She made a sweep of her eyes. Nothing. Where would she strike first? This had to be her most pressing issue. The only other potential problem would be the true Black Fleet (the Federation demonstrably didn’t count). No doubt they’d taken notice right away of her coopting their units. They’d send in a problem-solver soon enough. No investigation or diplomacy for the so-called Space Pirates—just problems and their solutions. She was like them in that way, among certain other similarities.

But she was getting sidetracked. How to deal with Samus? This would require patience and observation. Alternately, she could simply brute-force her way to victory. Samus couldn’t possibly withstand the full might of a pirate stronghold with Mother at the helm… could she?

 

* * *

 

Samus allowed three days for recovery. She could afford no more time than that and it still felt like an eternity. As she subsisted in her little cave hideout, eating scavenged vegetation and captured geemers, she could only imagine Old Bird and Grey Voice sitting opposite her, chastising her for her impatience. They’d agree on that point—maybe even saying the same things.

_You’re always rushing into things headlong. Instead of using your head for a battering ram, use it for thinking. You only have the one._

Even now, her lower back stung and ached when she moved. Fortunately, she’d used her recovery period to make what repairs she could to her armor. It supported her and mitigated pain, but the left knee joint required more internal pressure to motorize than the right, which made for a ridiculous lumber when she ran.

Nightfall covered her journey out from the cave and across a patch of low hills. They rolled on for a few miles, slowly growing into foothills of a low, minor mountain range. If memory served, she’d find another cave opening on the other side of the tallest peak. Rain occasionally pattered on her armor as she went. It had already cleaned these hills bare of moss. She used no lights to guide her, knowing this area would be watched after the pirates lost that recon party at the crater. But she couldn’t use enhanced visual functions of her suit’s visor, since those had been damaged beyond repair by the fall. So she had to use infrasonic pulses to occasionally map out the lay of the land in her path. Slow-going and noisy if someone was listening at that frequency. Hopefully they weren’t; but she’d just have to take that risk.

She made the mountain range just before midnight (Zebesian midnight; it’d be another full twenty-four regular hours before this area saw sunlight again) and had to rest half-way up. Damn hike was tearing at her more than she’d thought. Here again she saw the surface damage done by increased rainfall. These mountains used to be covered in a rubbery, orange, bush-like growth, giving them the look of bright fire in the daytime. At night, fire fleas swarmed the mountains, feasting on the bushes and transforming the range into a city of dancing lights. From where she now sat, she could see three bushes left and not a single living creature. Everything else had been ripped loose by the torrent.

From the top of the range she could see the pock-marked lowlands extending to the horizon—hollow crust, honeycombed by agelong natural erosion and animal excavation. She couldn’t tell in the dark, but she could reasonably bet the winding tunnels had been filled in with mud, the tunneling creatures had been drowned or driven out, and the surface had likely become a marshland. But that wasn’t Samus’s road; although, far in the distance, if conditions were just right, she might’ve been able to see the tips of the Crateria Rim. Nestled within that circle of spindly mountains sat Chozodia.

Her eyes turned down the slope. Rain poured in cascades across her path. Falls threw mist into the air, blocking what little view she had from that vantage. She started down slowly.

No good—her respite at the peak hadn’t been enough and now her wounds cried for mercy. Cursing her fragile bones, she started looking for a place to hide, sleep, and heal whatever she’d torn loose. She found it in a crevice between two jagged spires sticking up from the mountain’s face. One of them curled over the other, shaped so by what force she couldn’t tell. She crawled into the shelter.

Claws raked her back and hip in the moment of her turning onto her back, but then subsided. Through a narrow slot between the two rock spires rising over her, she could see a sliver of sky. No stars, though.

 

A handful of hours of sleep in her armor did little for Samus’s already gloomy mood. Twice, she was woken abruptly by the sensation of motion: rain flowing through her little nook, trying to carry her off with it.

Geemer meat, bitter and gelatinous, provided a meager breakfast in twilight. She’d eaten geemers only once while living on Zebes as a child. She’d hated it then, too. They were barbed beetles who fed on underbrush and smaller bugs. They looked dull and ugly and tasted the same way, but they were still plentiful and easy to catch if you knew where to look.

The cave at the bottom of the range hadn’t just been a waypoint to hide out in. If it was still open (and unguarded) she could use it to enter Zebes’s vast network of subterranean caverns. Not a strong promise, but enough to keep her picking a slow, treacherous path down the slick rockface. Thinking about it, was there any guarantee the cave path she wanted hadn’t also been flooded? It would be, in time, so she hurried herself along as much as she could.

With the thin, gray line of dawn to herald an end to her nighttime camouflage, she hopped down a short ridge and sidled over to the lip of another. There it was; and nary a guard! Clearly, the pirates didn’t have enough troops to guard every cave entrance. More would wait inside, no doubt, but at least—for the moment—Samus could heave a sigh of relief.

 

Worry set in again. She should have encountered some sort of patrol by now—at least a security camera hammered into the side of the cave. But there was nothing. Your average Federal Police neophyte might’ve rejoiced at so easy an infiltration. Not Samus. She knew better. The pirates had left this passage unattended for a reason. She’d find out soon enough, seeing as the only sensible path was still onwards and inwards.

 

Well, she found it. Hell, she’d almost walked right into it. Now, she remained very still, her visor peeking just enough around a wide stalagmite to retain a view of them. Sidehoppers—seven of them. The clumsy-looking bipeds stomped around a large cave chamber, their hive structure hanging from the tall ceiling.

No, _sidehopper_ wasn’t their right name; that’s just what Samus had always called them. Desgarga…? Dagasaga…? Disagreeable? She couldn’t remember the Chozo word for them. Didn’t matter. These things meant business and were extremely territorial to boot. And they’d built their home directly in her path. The ones she could see from her hiding place—illuminated dimly by the yellow glow of skkale vines growing on the cave walls—looked young and thin. The barbs on their legs hadn’t come in yet. Even so, their mandibles could do damage enough.

She waited some more and got a reward: an adult sidehopper rumbled through the chamber. The others got out of its way. Leg barbs were on full display on this one. To call them bipeds alone would be misleading, seeing as Samus herself was a biped. But these weren’t humanoid—not even close. The _ped_ part of biped signified almost all of what they were: a bulbous body, little more than a hanging head, supported by two massive legs, each terminating in stocky club-feet. When they wanted to move fast, they hopped, usually to the side. Hence, sidehopper.

Had planetfall not robbed her of the suit’s morphing ability, she could’ve easily slipped by them using a smaller tunnel. As it was, she could still do that, but only if she took off most of her armor first and dragged it behind her as she crawled. Fuck that. Who knew what sorts of other things would await her in those tunnels? She was already damaged enough.

Her armcannon loaded a missile into its chamber. She didn’t take aim yet; she instead brought up a setting in her HUD.

_RPG (S) loaded. Charge status: ARMED. Propellant status: ACTIVE UPON WEAPON FIRE. Detonation setting: IMPACT._

At her command, the setting changed:

_RPG (Stn.) loaded. Charge status: ARMED. Propellant status: DO NOT USE. Alt. propellant setting: CG. Detonation setting: TIMED (T+30s)._

And, with that, she sighted her target and pulled the trigger inside her cannon. Compressed gas forced the missile down the barrel. With a breathy _thump!_ The sidehoppers took notice of the sound and turned their bulging, glossy eyes in her direction, but she was already hidden behind her stalagmite. The missile, using none of its rocket propellant, soared in an arc across the room until it clattered against the floor and rolled to a stop fifty feet away. A few of the sidehoppers turned to face that sound. Then, the round detonated.

Shockwaves blasted out from the tiny explosive, rattling the cave walls and vibrating the air all around in a deliberately loud bang. The sidehoppers stumbled from the shock, the large adult twitching and blinking, but taking no steps back. It let out a grunt, then a warning call akin to a French horn. And it was on its way, stomping along, rattling the cave around it further. It and its surrounding family turned away from Samus’s hiding spot and went to investigate the clamor, leaving her free to slip quickly along the edge of the room. All the while, she kept her armcannon trained on the big one, ready to hit it hard and run if it turned.

But it didn’t. By the time she made the passage at the other end of the room, the sidehoppers were still huddled around the spent missile, nudging it with their cumbersome feet and cooing to each other with alarm and confusion.

There’d be more in these tunnels; Samus kept her guard up.

No sleep tonight. Samus thundered down a would-be-pitch-black passage, using her suit’s lights to illuminate the way ahead, turning it pale green. A rattling screech echoed after her. It was getting closer.

 _Why_ did she think she could try the same trick on hopping beetoms? _Stupid!_ Now a whole swarm was after her, hopping these caves as they were biologically inclined to.

Here came one, right behind her. It lunged with its powerful, slender rear legs. With a blast from her cannon, right into its mouth and out the top of its carapace, it fell back. The blast flashed a momentary picture for her of the coming swarm. She picked up the pace.

Around corners and down steep, slick slopes she charged, sometimes blowing rocky obstacles out of her way, hoping beyond hope she didn’t cause a cave-in. With her armor, it wouldn’t kill her, but it’d immobilize her, potentially until she starved to death.

There went another hopper, blasted to gooey bits for its tenacity. Soon, the swarm would be on her. These things had potent acid for saliva. They’d find the fibrous joints between her armor plates and bite. And bite. And spit and bite and chew until they burned through enough to get to the meat underneath. It was times like these Samus found herself really hating this planet. How the fuck did it evolve such ferocious and varied predators? Seemed like some kind of sick joke.

She could remember a time when she was fourteen or fifteen, still training with her armor. It was still all new to her then, but she was getting the hang of it. Grey Voice had the bright idea to sequester her in an unfamiliar part of Zebes’s cave system. For training. Sure, that’s what he told her at the time; personally, she was convinced he was punishing her for sloppy thinking. He’d chastised her for just that on more occasions than she could count.

Back then, she’d also encountered a swarm of hopping beetoms. And, like a fool, imagining herself invincible in her shiny new armor, she’d charged in.

After approximately eighty seconds, her pride shattered and she was, as in the present, on the run. How had she gotten away that time?

Ah, that’s right. She had found a little tunnel shooting off from the main path. Using her suit’s morphing ability, she dove in. Immediately, she found out the tunnel led nowhere. It ended abruptly and, just as soon, a serrated maw closed on her foot. Her suit’s atomic structure, usually stronger than diamond, was then weakened by the morph system. The beetom got through and started chewing on her foot.

At that point, she panicked and, not even aiming, fired the suit’s meager primary weapon: a hand-mounted distortion pistol. She had no idea how it worked, only that it packed a punch at close range. In this scenario, she got a surprise: rather than firing the pistol (as, pistol and all, the suit had abandoned solid form in the morph mode), it caused the entire suit to pulse energy outwards. All at once, the tunnel around her blew apart and widened, and the beetom attacked to her toe sucked up more than just her blood. Her suit’s potent energy filled it, then popped it. Most of the rest of the hopping little shits got the same treatment until the last ones retreated.

Back in the present, Samus was too out of breath to groan. Without the morphing ability, she couldn’t emit that bodily pulse. Her armcannon was more powerful than the hand-mounted default (which she’d removed long ago), but it was monodirectional. Neither could she use the focused laser as she had with the pirates in the crater; beetom exoskeleton resisted all but the most insidiously high EM frequencies.

Her head spun with analysis, neglecting observation. She ran right off a cliff. A few of the hopping beetoms careened over the edge alongside and after her, the rest skidding to a stop at the end of the passage. Samus tumbled down a long, dark shaft until—

 

Hunger, more than anything else, woke Samus. She saw a mist, wafting back and forth, in and out, right before her face and stretching back… how far? Until she noticed the rocking sensation and the sounds of lapping waves, she had no idea where she was. She lifted her head and gathered her floating body to tread the S2Cl2 liquid she’d landed in.

Harsh, green light from her visor and suit’s LEDs glistened off the otherwise black ripples and polished walls. For a few minutes, she just floated there. Soon, she’d have to figure out where she was; that chase through the tunnels hadn’t done her sense of direction any favors. And who’s to say how far she fell? But, for now, she collected herself.

In that calm, she smiled, which turned to a chuckle. She wasn’t quite sure why she was laughing, but that didn’t stop her. Perhaps the fact she’d survived yet another fall? Maybe the realization of how ridiculous it looked from the outside—her running from a swarm of giant, off-brand grasshoppers? Or just helpless gallows humor? It felt freeing to laugh—emotionally and physically. And, now that she focused on it, the green light illuminating the red liquid refracted brown underneath, giving the impression of a big bowl of shit. Made her laugh even harder.

Her stomach growled indignantly, cutting her laughter short. Hand on the slick wall, she made a circle around the room, finding no outlet or shore. She increased the brightness on her suit’s lights and looked around the higher walls. Nothing. A vertical shaft with slick walls and a dingy pool at the bottom. Visions of swimming in a toilet bowl prodded her mind again. She turned her attention downwards, under the chlorosulphane, and soon found what she was looking for: a tall crack in the side of the shaft, widening towards the bottom. It admitted her.

By all accounts, the suit should’ve sunk right to the bottom of the pool, but it didn’t. Chozodian alloy was dense, yes, but it could be offset by air stored in the pauldrons and underneath the breastplate.

The submerged passage narrowed in several places to a dangerous degree, but she squeezed through. Eventually, it opened into a flowing underground river—one of many. At least, there used to be many. With how much rain now fell on the surface, Samus knew these rivers were being sucked dry.

She let the river take her on its way until she saw a bank low enough to climb. And now, to check her systems for further damage and find some food.

 

Well, that wasn’t supposed to be there. Samus, having spent the last thirty-plus hours climbing up through unfamiliar tunnels, now stood before a metal rod, half her height, sticking out of the ground, bearing a glass tube on top. It was a light pylon, but the light had gone out.

Pirate tech? Truth be told, Samus had little experience with planetside pirate operations; she mostly attacked spacefaring vessels or, at most, ships landed on worlds. She examined the craftsmanship, finding it rugged and utilitarian—exactly what the pirates liked for their day-to-day equipment. Definitely not Chozo.

On a whim, she shut off her lights. Bingo! Over the rim of an upcoming slope she could see a faint blue glow. She crept up the slope, then down and around a corner. The lit pylon was just as solitary as its dim brother. A few steps further and Samus saw yet another glow in the distance.

Following the lights would surely lead her right into pirate hands, but also towards her goal. How long could she hope to remain undetected? From pylon to pylon (some of them darkened, as if they had been placed weeks ago and left unattended) she mulled over her course of action if she ran into a patrol. She hadn’t seen any cameras yet, so, if she took out each patrol quickly, from the darkness, their command center in Chozodia would know only that they were losing troops. They wouldn’t know what or who would be doing it.

Problem: command would be able to pinpoint the location of each attack and track her progress, thus alerting them to her as a singular, intelligent threat. Enough for them to plan accordingly.

Solution: …none. This was literally her only option. If the pirates wanted to blockade her path, she’d just have to break through it. If they wanted to lay traps for her, she’d just have to keep her wits sharp. If they wanted to send out squadrons to route her, she’d litter those caverns with their corpses.

Let them come.

 

With night falling over the distant surface, Samus was just finishing a small meal, tucked away in an alcove scarcely big enough for her armor. Her helmet rested on her knees and her eyes stared into a darkness too black to get used to. The air was close, damp, and warm. Sweat beaded slowly on her temples. Years before, she wouldn’t have been able to stand the darkness. Human eyes, so addicted to visible light, seek any scant input, even going so far as to hallucinate random shapes and motions in the shadows just to fill the emptiness. Hers were no different. The shapes they conjured, however…

But that was past. Darkness no longer bothered her as it once had. She had forced herself to get used to it. Not the best way to treat your own brain, but she was fine. Right? Right.

Ears, in their own way, hallucinated just as much as the eyes in times of sensory deprivation. Fortunately, Samus had the sounds of her chewing, the scrape of her boot along the rocky floor, the soft creak of her armor shifting against itself to focus on. And she had her heartbeat, so grotesquely loud. Wonderful—now she was aware of it, she couldn’t get it out of her head. She could even feel the pulse in her neck. Worse.

She concentrated on other noises, trying to drown out those emitted by her own disgusting vitality. That’s when she heard it: a low hum, accompanied by an intermittent hiss. Instinct—not fear—froze her (and heightened her heartrate annoyingly). It was barely audible; could she even be sure she still heard it, or had her imagination picked up the noise and carried it forth? No—there it was! She was sure of it.

Realization smacked her in the face. _You know what that is! Get down!_ She reacted just in time to save her skull from exploding just as the rock wall behind her did. The red flash of the attack illuminated the hall and the attacker. A Narg, standing a dozen feet away, barely hiding around a corner. A yellow flash erupted from her cannon, immediately accompanied by the crack of her shot’s impact. It’d hit the wall.

The tunnel became a light show as Samus and the Narg exchanged yellow and red shots, each one filling the air with more dust. Samus rolled from her position splayed on the floor and stood up, back to a wall, cannon out. Her helmet--!

It had clattered to the floor when she dodged the first shot. She might as well be dead already without it. She fired off a volley of shots and heard a gurgle and growl echo back. She then turned on her suit lights. Everything had become hazy with dust. There was her helmet. Another volley of covering fire secured her enough to quickly grab it and put it on. As its little claws were still gathering up the contact suit’s collar, she stepped out of cover and, with lights shining forth at full force, found the Narg.

He fired, missed, and half-turned to run. Samus’s shots ripped through him, blowing apart the far wall. He died before he hit the floor.

She knew he wouldn’t be alone. Stepping over the body, she kept her weapon ready, but dimmed her lights. So much for an overall surprise attack. That being said, maybe she could still get the jump on the next batch.

Nope. Green lights with long, sizzling tails behind them jetted down the tunnel, bursting rock at her feet and behind her. Plasma rifles. She returned fire with her admittedly less powerful cannon. One of the plasma jets struck her in the left arm. Her nerves screamed and her legs wobbled. The heat of a plasma shot could easily carry right through physical armor, even if the armor remained intact. Biting back the pain, she loaded an RPG round into her cannon and waited half a second. She saw the flash of the next shot and fired at that. The plasma hit her in the chest and she fell back, missing the sight of her missile exploding right beside the group of three pirates, shredding one and sending the other two flying. She did, however, see one of the pirates sail over her floored position, screaming as he went.

Breath fought its way back into her burning chest. She rolled onto her front and aimed back at the landing spot of the pirate. She filled him with holes, just to be sure. Rolling again, painfully, she aimed between her knees. No living thing remained.

Throttling back the searing pain in her arm and chest, she heaved herself up. She had to move. Stumbling forward into a deliberate jog increased breath. Blood. Her nose was bleeding—probably from the missile blast. She had only herself to blame for that; creating an explosion in an enclosed location tends to be poor for one’s health. But she wouldn’t’ve done it if the pirates hadn’t’ve been there, so it was their fault, really. Their fault. All their fault.

 _That’s it_ , she told herself, letting rage pull her face into a tense grin, _hunt them. You know these caves; they don’t. Hunt them_.

More voices echoed ahead, speaking Urtragh in snaps and hisses. The hum of their weapons charging filled her ears.

“Take the left side,” said one.

“Movement!” whispered another.

Samus readied her weapon and fired before rounding the corner, blowing part of the rock wall apart and scattering stony shrapnel all over the closest pirate. His head evacuated with her next shot.

_Hunt them._

A pirate leveled his rifle, trying to move around her in the tight corridor. She grabbed the gun and shoved it up. It fired above her head. She fired into the pirate’s stomach five times. He vomited blood onto her pauldron.

_Disgusting._

Another leapt around a corner and fired, hitting only his comrades’ corpses, tossed his way. Samus was right behind them. The pirate screeched, then broke in her wake.

_Weak._

Her lights turned down a blind corner and saw a foot disappearing. She fired. The next offshoot revealed a pirate, running down a parallel tunnel, clearly panicking. She fired again and again, down each linking passage. She fired through the walls. A muffled cry, a thump, and then blood pooling out around the next corner. One more down.

_Yes, run! Let me hunt you!_

Three shots snapped at the walls and ceiling around her. She whirled around and dodged a fourth. The attacker jerked and twitched, finding half his head carved out.

“Hmph. Almost got me—” A bolt of plasma pinging off her outstretched, smoking armcannon interrupted her. She acquired the target: he was running down the hall at her, firing and screaming.

 _Click._ The trigger depressed, but no shot fired.

“Oh, you bitch!” she grunted. Instead, she ducked under a plasma jet and rushed the pirate, tackling him. She could feel the spine snap with her arms around his back. She lifted and, running, slammed him down to the ground. Her cannon came down on his head, then her fist, then the cannon again, smashing open the skull.

Here, she paused just long enough to reset her weapon. Its jagged edges—its true form—jutted out again, releasing steam. The plasma shot had overheated some component inside. Her hand wasn’t burned, but—

 _SNAP! CRACK!_ More shots impacted around her, then one skimmed her helmet, searing her ear. She fell back and brought the pirate corpse with her. She wore it across her back as a meat cape, letting it take the shots as she continued venting her cannon.

 _Too slow_. Thinking fast, she ejected a missile round into her hand, activated it manually, then tossed it over her and the meat shield’s shoulders.

“What’s that, a gren—” but they could say no more, thrown against walls and internal tissue rattled by the stun round’s intense vibrations. Samus’s armor, tuned specifically to cancel such resonances, protected her. She threw off the shield and clicked closed the newly-vented weapon. The pirates died before they could make sense of the situation.

“Is that all?” she asked the dead. Up ahead, lights shone forth and orders barked out. She could hear their footfalls. “Really?” She sighed. Her head shook, her shoulders rotated and her feet found their marks.

 

Zebes revolved on its axis, passing midnight and starting a new day—the fourth since setting out from that cave on the surface. Inside its crust, Samus found herself reveling in a familiar sensation: the thrill of the hunt.

Her hand gripped a pirate’s plasma rifle, wrenching it away from its previous aim as she vaulted over its owner. She spent her final missile. It soared down the high, broad avenue which currently knew this battle, passing oncoming green and red jets of light. Each pirate might not have been too smart, but their command structure was and it learned fast. They knew by now, after hours and waves and mounds of dead, to recognize the explosive rounds and shoot them out of the air. Samus was betting on this. They shot, but the round’s propellant had already cut. Its trajectory plummeted, only for the propellant to resume, driving it forward, at a lower angle, right under the shots meant for it.

Fire and fury ran along the cavern walls, consuming at least a dozen Nargs. Ah, that sound—Samus had yet to tire of it. Her feet dug in and she whipped around the pirate she’d vaulted over. She aimed and fired, but he was too fast. His foot impacted behind her knee. Oh, it just had to be _that_ leg, didn’t it? Pinched nerve wailing, Samus crashed down on all fours.

In a moment, she assessed the situation and elected to use the momentum. She tumbled to the side rather than trying to steady herself. Thus, she rolled onto her back, cannon aiming up at the pirate. Maybe he looked proud of himself for downing this new, deadly foe; maybe he looked furious; Samus couldn’t tell. In a moment, his face didn’t exist, so the point was moot.

She scrambled to the side to find cover and catch her breath. She might have just now spent her last missile, but she’d long since spent her voice. Her grumbles and curses now came out in raspy whispers. This always happened. Her mind wandered sloppily to consider whether this was why she disliked singing so much? Maybe her voice was just weak.

What the hell was she doing? She was tired. This fighting had been going for hours. Any normal pirate force would recognize a lost cause and pull back to reassess. They’d have done so by now, at least. Why did they keep throwing more and more at her?

 _SNAP!_ The first of yet another volley of shots scarred the rocky floor next to her leg. That did it; she had to find a way out of here. She looked around, taking shots around the corner as she did to slow the next wave’s progress. Nothing. No escape.

 _Idiot—no escape that you can see with your eyes_.

A sonic pulse boomed out from her suit and, lo and behold, the wall across from her was weak. A little force, and…

 Her foot braced on the wall beside her and kicked. She leapt in an arc, firing at any pirates visible in the haze and strobing lights. Shoulder, back, then hip rolled her to her feet and into a charge against the weak wall. She shot it, then tackled through.

“She opened up that wall!” the Nargs gurgled. “After her!”

Laying on her side, she built up energy in her cannon, seeing it vibrate and begin to pour light through its many seams. Destruction belched out of it and into the ceiling, effectively slamming the door behind her in a tumble of rocks.

After laying there and gulping down some much-needed air, she rasped to herself, “Alright, Samus, you’re not even two meters away from them. Rest later.” She creaked to her feet and stumbled off, trailing dust behind her.

 

Finally, good news stared Samus in the face at the end of a long, low, mossy tunnel, far now from her last shot fired. It was one of Mother’s eyes. Mother might have had limited psychic abilities granted by her Chozo masters, but she was by no means omniscient. Therefore, she compensated by making herself as omnipresent as possible. To one unacquainted with Mother’s security infrastructure, the little red-brown orbs hanging from certain ceilings might look like fungal growth. But they were eyes. Through them, Mother kept extended watch over the caverns leading to and around Chozodia. Samus must be close.

Another bonus: perhaps Samus could get an assist. She stepped up into full view before the lensless camera and—

 

* * *

 

 _Guess it’s my lucky day_. Mother couldn’t believe her eyes (well, just the one eye, in this instance): there was Samus Aran, standing brazenly in one of the south-western drainage pipes. Was—was she _waving_?

For a moment, Mother considered whether Samus had lost more than a few marbles either during her time apart from Zebes or in that last spat with the pirate forces she’d sent after her. Why in any reason would someone walk up to their enemy and wave like that?

Another moment passed during which Mother considered the possibility of Aran surrendering. Crash landing here—no doubt with significant damage to her suit and person—and then having to fight through a grueling gauntlet of foes may have broken her. But that was less likely than the other option.

Out of necessity, in a rare moment of what could be misconstrued as empathy, Mother forced herself into the girl’s mindset. Called here because pirates took her home; crashed here because Mother shot her down; waving at Mother’s camera because—

 _Oh_.

She didn’t know. It was so simple. After all, what reason would she have to suspect Mother of treachery? It was almost laughable—almost sad. No, it was incredibly, palpably, heart-wrenchingly sad. After all this time, Aran hoped Mother remained a prisoner in her own system under the Space Pirate boot. She hoped for a friend in the midst of this turmoil. This poor, aggressively dim sap was trying to send her a message.

It repulsed Mother. The sheer stupidity alone made her want to grow a stomach just to vomit from it. This— _this, right here_ —was why she was doing what she was doing. These inbred, backwards residents of this meaningless galaxy seemed to exist solely to exhibit their grand ineptitudes. _Why_ they had been allowed to remain alive in this state she had no idea. Okay, she knew the reason—the reason for her own existence, in fact—but it wasn’t a _good_ reason! There could be no reason good enough for _this!_ Totally unacceptable! [REDACTED] would—could—learn nothing from these people.

However…

Could she use this? Her mind worked and soon produced a satisfactory plan. Samus Aran and her galaxy might be lost causes, but their inequities could be turned to Mother’s advantage, if only to mitigate the shedding of further resources.

 

* * *

 

Samus had conceived of two possibilities: either Mother remained intact and aware of her various security measures, or she had been completely disconnected and probably destroyed. In the case of the former, the pirates would have set up a system to see what she saw and know what she knew, in which case Samus had just offered a greeting to both a potential ally and the pirate commander. The latter case presented two consequences of its own: the pirates had hooked their own systems up to the network now vacated by Mother and would therefore see her now, or they had done no such thing and nobody was watching. That left two out of three cases in which the pirates could see her and would have already dispatched new waves of fresh meat to her location. Mutually exclusive from those odds, a one-in-three chance had Mother now possessing concrete knowledge of Samus’s presence on Zebes.

So the odds didn’t exactly stack in Samus’s favor; but, then again, even before she decided to pose for it, the camera had seen her coming, even before Samus knew it was there. And the pirates already knew.

Before her eyes, the little orb rotated one click to the left, then back again. And again. It hadn’t been moving before now. Its movements seemed random.

Of course, they weren’t. After a minute, Samus recognized the binary code and started translating:

_CANT-SPEAK-THEY-LISTEN.PATROL-ON-ITS-WAY.200-UNITS.WILL-STALL.FOLLOW-DIRECTIONS-QUICKLY.STRAIGHT-RIGHT-STRAIGHT-STRAIGHT-DOWN-STRAIGHT-LEFT.HIDE-FIVE-MINUTES.RIGHT-LEFT-STRAIGHT-STRAIGHT-STRAIGHT-STRAIGHT-RIGHT.HIDE-ONE-MINUTE.RIGHT-STRAIGHT-LEFT-LEFT-UP.SHOOT-CAMERA.SHOOT-THIS-ONE-TOO._

The eye burned to ash in one blast and Samus was on her way.

 

Mother clearly hadn’t slowed one iota since Samus had last seen her; every step of her directions skimmed Samus just out of harm’s way. More than once she heard the clamor of oncoming patrols a split second before making a turn or ducking into one of the hiding spots. Samus was prepared for a fight each time, but it never came and she arrived safely and unseen in a pump room antechamber by way of a slick, rusty pipe.

As soon as she threw back the iron grated cover she aimed and blew apart the one little camera hanging in the corner. She climbed out and looked around at the end of her road. The room was actually a room, not a cave, and had lighting built into the ceiling. Chozo lighting: creamy yellow and soft, emitted by rectangular panels. Instantly, Samus felt nostalgia settle in behind her eyes. She dared not remove her helmet to smell the air and ruin it all; there was no way it smelled like musty, peaceful Zebes in this dank sewer.

Movement pulled her attention and her aim to the far corner. The shadows produced a walking garbage can—one of Mother’s maintenance drones.

“It’s me, Samus,” it said in robotic monotone, shuffling up to Samus.

She lowered her weapon and said, redundantly, “Mother?”

“Yes. We don’t have long until they send someone to investigate.”

“What happened? Where are the Chozo? How did this happen?”

“Not enough time to explain all that. The Chozo are dead, Samus.”

The words impaled her. “How?” she croaked.

“Murdered by the pirates.” A pause, then, “I’m sorry.”

Samus leaned against a nearby cylindrical pump structure, trying to control her breathing.

Mother went on: “Listen, we have to get you to a safer location. I can cause a disturbance in the Lower Norfair geothermal plant, which should buy you enough time to get to the residential area in Chozodia. It’s a lightly-patrolled area anyway. Can you find your way there from here?”

No response.

“Samus?”

She felt sick. At some point, her legs refused to support her and she sank down, still clinging to the rusty metal of the pump. Dead. Again. Because she hadn’t been there. She felt so sick.

Helmet off, biol decorated the ground. Mother remained quiet. Samus could hear herself heaving and wheezing, but it didn’t sound like her at all. It sounded like Samantha. The more she considered the noises and feelings of her present, the more it seemed Samantha was doing it all, not Samus. Samus could only watch.

After a few minutes, Mother broke the silence. If she was trying to sound comforting, it didn’t work. The maintenance drone apparently only had one flat inflection and one volume setting. “There’s a patrol on the way. If they find you here, they’ll know I helped you and they’ll limit my connections more. Please, let me help you while I still can.”

Screams and darkness threatened to take Samus again. Every time the rage and the terror bled out from her memory and over her mind, the world just dropped away, leaving her breathless, naked, and alone. Sometimes it even lasted for hours at a time, but she always had a way out: their voices. They had always been there to bring her back to reality and back to life. Maybe they’d done something to her mind—some old Chozo trick—to leave imprints of themselves deep inside. Or maybe it was just love. Old Bird and Grey Voice were supposed to be permanent rocks in her mind to ground her, but now they weren’t.

Samantha couldn’t handle this, but Samus could. With herculean resolve, she reasserted control, first through her diaphragm, then in her jaw, and finally in her knees. _Panic later. Fight now._ Samus stood and refitted her helmet. She still felt sick and weak, but she knew she could keep control of herself now.

“Could—could you repeat your plans, Mother?” she stammered, trying to sound detached.

“The residential area of Chozodia. You remember it?”

Samus nodded.

“Can you get there from here?”

Samus swallowed nothing and nodded.

“I’ll cause a distraction to clear the way. I’ll open all the doors I can. Move quickly.”

“You’re sure they won’t be there?”

“Patrols in Chozo houses and temples are light; the Nargs don’t like to go near them. They are afraid of vengeful spirits.”

“Yeah, they’re right about that,” Samus said with venom. The unbridled loathing unlocked an additional slice of her usual self.

 _Hunt them_.

Samus nodded to Mother’s proxy and turned to go. The residential area sat atop her goal: that dusty old armory. She’d stop there on her way to the rendezvous with Mother, then she could take her time rebuilding her armor and planning the counterattack to cleanse Zebes. The pirates had left no Chozo alive on the planet. Samus would leave no pirate alive on this or any world in the galaxy.

**Author's Note:**

> [Link to glossary](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19343548)


End file.
